The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • President Buhari at the UN

    President Buhari at the UN

    President Muhammadu Buhari is currently in New York to attend the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly. Two days ago he delivered an impressive speech at the General Assembly which was warmly received by the world leaders attending the Session, including many African leaders. There are more than 100 world leaders attending the General Assembly. We should offer him our warmest congratulations for his bravery and patriotism in going to New York in spite of his recent grave illness, from which he has, obviously, not fully recovered yet. Attending a session of the UN General Assembly in New York is by no means an easy physical and mental task. Apart from the long flight to New York there are endless meetings to attend at the multilateral and bilateral levels, including meetings with his foreign counterparts, the multilateral UN and other financial agencies, potential foreign investors, particularly American investors, and the large Nigerian community in the United States. Many of these will be anxious to meet him and hear from him first hand reports about the disturbing political and economic situation in our country. From the official programe of his visit, which I have seen, and with which I am familiar, having once served at the UN, it is going to be a grueling progamme of meetings and events that could be telling on his stamina.

    Now, his brief speech at the UN General Assembly, the full text of which I have seen, was delivered on Tuesday, two days ago. It was forthright and broadly consistent with the basic objectives and principles of Nigeria’s foreign policy since independence in 1960. In that speech he reiterated Nigeria’s total commitment to democracy, not only for ourselves .but for the whole of Africa. He assured the world leaders that, despite some setbacks over the years, Nigeria’s “faith and commitment in democracy remains unshaken”.  He said the frontiers of good governance and democracy, including the holding of free elections, and the enthronement of the rule of law was expanding everywhere in Africa. In this regard he specifically referred to Nigeria’s role in promoting democracy in Africa by its direct intervention in resolving political conflicts in Africa, in such African countries as Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and, more recently, The Gambia. Nigeria’s decisive role in those countries made a huge difference to their political future and stability, badly needed in Africa. Nigeria can be proud of its leading role in resolving conflicts in Africa, in most cases by sending peace keeping troops to troubled African countries under the aegis of the UN. President Buhari also acknowledged the positive role of the UN and the international community in assisting countries of the Lake Chad region in offering those countries relief and other humanitarian assistance.

    In his speech President Buhari expressed his concerns about the expansion of terrorism in the world including Boko Haram in Nigeria.  He referred to what he called the exemplary show of solidarity by the international community in assisting countries in the Sahel and Lake Chad region, including in containing the threats of Al Qaida and Boko Haram in the region. He expressed regrets over the bloody civil war and carnage in Syria which have led to the problem of massive Syrian refugees in Europe and the neighboring countries. In this regard he expressed his appreciation of the efforts of Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Greece for their assistance to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the major areas of conflict in the Middle East. He added that Nigeria too was providing relief and humanitarian assistance to millions in refugee camps in Nigeria afflicted by terrorism, drought, floods and other natural disasters.

    He conveyed his support and appreciation for what the international community was doing globally to promote gender equality, social inclusion, youth empowerment, education, creativity and innovation. This is appropriate as the theme of this UNGA Session is “Focusing on people: striving for peace and a decent life for all on a sustainable planet”.

    On the issue of widespread public corruption which he decried, he called for the cooperation of the international community in promoting global financial accountability by providing critical assistance and material support to combat corruption and asset recovery in which Nigeria is now closely involved.

    President Buhari decried the new conflicts erupting in Myanmar which he compared to the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in 1995 and Rwanda in 1994 and called on the UN and the international community to condemn “the horrendous suffering … of a state backed programme of a total depopulation of the Rohingyas in Myanmar.” His comments on the Middle East were no less scathing. He referred to the continuing flouting (by Israel) since 1967 of several UN Security Council Resolutions on the Middle East which has led to the continuing suffering of the Palestinian people and the blockade of Gaza. Broadly, these comments are consistent with Nigeria’s well known policy in the Middle East which supports a two states solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict

    He expressed Nigeria’s support for the on- going efforts at reforming the entire UN system in which Nigeria has been involved since its admission to the UN in 1960. He also reiterated that any UN reforms should include the admission of one or two African members to the status of permanent members of the UN Security Council. This is a legitimate demand as the UN cannot truly be regarded as a global organization until its African members are treated equally, at all levels, with other regional groups. It is the only regional group that is excluded from the permanent membership of the UN Security Council with all its rights and privileges.

    Altogether, it was a good outing by the president. Nigeria’s views and policy on all these global issues were very well articulated. In the course of his stay in New York he will be holding more talks at both the bilateral and multilateral levels. This is where the real diplomacy takes place, not at the UN itself. When he meets President Trump, President Buhari will be asking for more arms supplies from the US to fight terrorism in Nigeria.  There is a mutuality of interests in evolved here. But he should also convey to him in very strong terms Nigeria’s concerns about the hostility of his government to black immigrants and the brutal manner in which blacks are being treated. This is totally unacceptable and intolerable in a civilized world.

     

    Am. O. Fafowora

    • Amb. Dapo Fafowora is a former Ambassador and deputy permanent representative of Nigeria to the UN, New York.
  • A wrong path

    A wrong path

    Nnamdi Kanu burst on to the scene from nowhere. Like Daniel Kanu of the Abacha for president fame, he saw an opening and grabbed it with both hands to change the course of his life. All we were told is that Nnamdi Kanu was one of the lieutenants of Raph Uwazuruike, founder of the Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). But he was said to have fallen out with Uwazuruike following irreconcilable differences.

    Kanu started his own movement. He had learnt the ropes from master. So setting up in business was not difficult.  He did what all people with such mission do. Kanu first established a radio station in London.  He jammed the radio wave of other stations back home in order to reach his people. His people were the Igbo at home and in the Diaspora. But he needed those at home more because he knew he could only realise his Biafra dream with their support.

    For you to believe in his cause, you must be part of the struggle at home, which he knew was not going to be easy. But he played on his people sentimental attachment to Biafra to rally them round himself.  The average Igbo man, whether old or young,  man or woman, is forever tied to Biafra. Even the youths among them who do not know the story of Biafra, the creation of the late Chukwuemeka Odumegu-Ojukwu, go gaga once the name, Biafra, is mentioned. What makes Biafra turn the head of the Igbo?

    The Igbo are not the only marginalised ethnic group in the country. If we look around us, we can even argue that their lot is better than that of many other ethnic nationalities. What will the almost forgotten minorities in the country say if the Igbo claim that they are being unfairly treated? The fact is the Igbo boxed themselves into the corner they are today.  They are the architects of their own problem.  Before Ojukwu came up with the Biafra idea in 1967, the  Igbo were at the commanding heights in every area of human endeavour.

    They were in commerce, politics and the military. Anywhere you turned to, you found the imprint of the Igbo.  But we live in an interdependent world. The Igbo thrived in what they did because they enjoyed the support and understanding of others around them. The Igbo did not depend solely on their fellow Igbo to survive.  They lived, worked and played with people from other parts of the country,  who extended their hands of fellowship to them. They broke that bond with Biafra. We may say that Biafra in 1967 was a child of circumstance; an accident of history,  but can we say that of the Biafra Nnamdi Kanu and his ilk now want to create?

    What Kanu does not seem to realise is that Biafra as a nation is dead and buried. He and his co-travellers can only ruminate on what would have been if Ojukwu had succeeded. Kanu is free to dream about having Biafra. And the truth is Biafra as a nation will forever remain a dream. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)  should stop deluding itself about recreating a republic of Biafra 47 years after the hurriedly put together nation surrendered to Nigeria. Biafra was defeated  in a war it instigated,  but today, it is not being treated as a conquered nation because of the magnanimity of former head of state Gen Yakubu Gowon.

    After the war, Gowon declared that there was no victor, no vanquished and initiated what he called the three Rs (reintegration, reconstruction and rehabilitation). The process is to ensure the reintegration of the Igbo into the society and that process has been on in the past 47 years. War is not a good thing. It took us three years to fight the civil war, but for nearly 50 years, we have been trying to make peace without success. This is why it is unwise of Kanu to have exhumed the ghost of Biafra. He did not think about the consequences of his action and the painful thing is that those who should have dissuaded him either kept quiet or tacitly supported him.

    Kanu took the wrong path and the elders of his region rather than call him to order to save their zone lined up behind him as their new found messiah. The young man has broken the laws of the land with his misguided mission. What does the Igbo want? Can they not bring their demands to the table? There can be no better time than now when the conversation is all about restructuring for the Igbo to make their grievances known. But, as we have argued in this space before,  secession, which Kanu is advocating, is not the same thing as restructuring.

    Secession is a treasonable offence and there is no government anywhere in the world that will allow that because once the secessionists succeed they will take over power. Fela did not do a quarter of what Kanu is doing today before his music empire – Kalakuta republic – was razed by soldiers in 1978. His offence : creating a republic within a Republic. There cannot be two captains in  a ship. That is not possible. How can there be a Biafra republic with its own head of state in a sovereignty like Nigeria? This is the implication of what Kanu wants to do.

    If the Igbo do not want to be part of Nigeria any more,  there are better ways of making their position known. And I do not think that Kanu or his creation, IPOB, can speak for the Igbo on such a grave issue. In any case,  many Igbo seem to be happy with their union with Nigeria. But unfortunately,  they are afraid of speaking out against Kanu for fear being attacked.  Is that the leader they want? A leader that will cow the young and old into submission?

    The Igbo do not seem to know what they want. If they do, they won’t have waited for Operation Python Dance before letting Kanu know that he was playing with fire with his romance with Biafra. Now, he has gone underground after creating a problem for his people. That is what they all do when their activities catch up with them. I appeal that we use this to pull his ears and allow him to return home or wherever he likes to pick up the pieces of his life.

  • In defence of Operation Python Dance

    Many well-meaning Nigerians who are genuinely concerned about the survival of our nation are pained that President Muhammadu Buhari and his bungling APC, after mouthing restructuring and government of change to secure our votes   are set to fritter away an historic opportunity  to resolve  the national question that has haunted our nation since the derailment of our federal arrangement by the military following its infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians fighting for the soul of Nigeria shortly after independence.   But it will amount to intellectual deceit to equate this with the resolve of South-east’s defeated PDP politicians and their IPOB surrogates or those the Minister of Information calls “coalition of the politically disgruntled and the treasury looters” to make the nation ungovernable in order to protect the disproportionate share of our nation’s wealth, they illegally  confiscated.

    Were the current war about restructuring or marginalization, the disgruntled groups now fomenting  trouble had  had 14 years  to join hands with their Yoruba compatriots who have been at the vanguard of  restructuring since 1993 following the annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria mandate. A greater opportunity came six years before Buhari’s presidency during which time Igbo- dominated Jonathan Presidency ate with their 10 fingers. And even if it is agreed the current struggle is about restructuring, how is that advanced by a relentless attack on the person of President Buhari?

    Unfortunately, critics of Operation Python Dance, have by their own level of assault on the person President Buhari on the pages of newspapers and in the social media tried to outdo the misguided Igbo youths that Joe Igbokwe describes as “association of hate preachers and wailing bigots who see nothing good in Buhari”.

    First, they claim Operation Python Dance was antithetical to democracy  without pointing out that our own brand of democracy  already under a siege  by a self-serving legislature, a judiciary whose leadership is undergoing  inquisition for corruption and the two dominant political parties, PDP and APC, lacking in ideological distinction, is already on trial since  democracy cannot thrive with sick institutions.

    Some even said Operation Python Dance was motivated by Buhari’s hatred for the Igbos.  How can it be otherwise when President Buhari left out Igbo office seekers while ceding key positions in his cabinet to his Daura village school mates who many believe are now holding him hostage, they reasoned?  They however forgot that not long ago, there was  a President Azikiwe Jonathan  who ceded over 60% of key positions to his South-south and South-east supporters, 30% to the north and less than 10% to the South-west only to complain later that he was caged during his presidency. Hawkers of Buhari’s anti-Igbo sentiments also forgot to remind Nigerians that in his last two unsuccessful outings as presidential candidate, Buhari bypassed other ethnic groups to pick Igbo vice presidential candidates.

    With Fulani herdsmen’s mindless killings across the country, how has Operation Python Dance in the embattled South-east become a priority – others critics want to know?

    As a self-admitted absentee Fulani herdsman with 500 herds of cow, he could not but be sympathetic to the herdsmen’s plight, others explained. The problem is that if critics conveniently forgot Buhari’s order that Fulani herdsmen caught in action rampaging other people communities  be shot on sight, they are not likely going to remember how even an inattentive Governor Fayose of Ekiti found a final solution to  the Fulani nuisance and menace.

    And finally, critics, especially those who Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said hardly notice differences of ethnicity and religion when looting our resources, questioned the President’s motive for resorting to use of a military whose leadership is tilted towards the North and Islam. I think it can be said that while the military still carry the scar of infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians in the first republic and in the years they lord it over Nigeria, the military as custodian of our constitution, remains our only hope and the last place of refuge when our survival as a nation is threatened. The military, after all owns the state.

    President Buhari deserves commendation for Operation Python Dance.  It is a disservice to Nigerians that critics have not weighed the consequences of the last two years of relentless attack by Igbo misguided youths on someone who enjoys a cult-like following in the north. As Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, my former teacher and former foreign affairs minister put it last Sunday, ‘An average person on the northern streets believes in Buhari. He stands now in the kind of position that the late Sardauna stood in the sixties’. Tragically, Kanu’s madness and the intemperate language of his supporters can only be compared with the pre-coup years of 1963 and 64 when Zik’s West African Pilot and the Nigerian Citizen tried to outdo each other in name-calling and hate messages.

    Operation Python Dance, I believe has saved the South-east from itself. Sixty percent Igbo live in other peoples land far away from their ancestral home. Governor Okezie Ikpeazu who last week claimed “God averted the greatest bloodbath in history” put the figures of Igbo in the north as 12million. According to Nasir el Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, Igbo occupied a land area larger than all the south-eastern states put together. The Igbo put the figure of their investments in the north at N44 trillion.  Kanu and his group are knowledgeable; the problem is that they lack wisdom… As clear headed Joe Igbokwe put it even before Kanu became law on to himself, “ethnic bigotry and hate speeches our people both at home and abroad dish out every day endanger our people living in all parts of Nigeria”.

    But beyond hate speeches and the ranting of a demented mind, Kanu has gone beyond the cliff by threatening to plunge the nation into a second civil war.  It is on record that  Kanu at the 2015 world Igbo Congress  in Los Angeles, said  “we need gun and we need bullets to fight the Zoo government in Nigeria”. There are also clips of Kanu’s hosting of Abdulkadir Erkahraman , who was said to be a Turkish diplomat  in his home town  Isiama Afara  Umuahia  where he was reported to have said: “The Turkish citizen visit  was in line with IPOB plan to solidify the actualization of Biafra”.  Since that boasting, 22,000 pieces of pump action rifles in three consignments have been seized by customs in Tin Can Island Ports, Lagos, all shipped from Turkey – a case of the witch cried yesterday and the child died this morning.

    While critics of Operation Python Dance who seems to weep louder than the bereaved keep calling Buhari names, however, relieved elected representatives of the people of the South-east have found their voices. As soon as Kanu crawled into a hole at the approach of Operation Python Dance.

    Governor Umahi of Ebonyi State issued a statement saying: “All activities of IPOB are, hereby, proscribed. IPOB and all other aggrieved groups are advised to articulate their position on all national issues to be submitted to the committee of governors, Ohaneze Ndi Igbo and National Assembly members from the South East zone through the chairman of the South East Governors’ Forum,” adding that the forum believed in the unity and indivisibility of the country and reinforced their desire for the restructuring of the country.

    Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State followed with his own statement  urging the federal government and citizens to treat the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu  as an individual whose views do not represent those of the generality of Igbo, adding no reasonable Igbo man ‘would support secession or division of the country”.

  • And our dawn erupts in moonshine

    Nigeria is still not the greatest country in Africa. ‘It’ is not the greatest country in the world. ‘It’ is a creature borne of incest, still. But it is hardly the ‘contraption’ frequently alluded to by generations of revolutionary poseurs and armchair Trotskys. It is shallow and very unrealistic of the latter, to wish our problems away by simply calling for secession; an end to the ‘forced marriage’ of our cultures and ethnicities by British colonialists.

    Nigeria fails as a nation because we fail as a people and progenitors of African civilisation. Rather than muster a superior culture of nationhood and society, we curate the worst that our forebears dared espouse, coating it as the ‘Nigerian factor,’ and embellishing it as our flamboyant code of conduct.

    Thus we covet an incestuous relationship with self – the dark, chthonian parts of our innate nature. We mould our clan where racial foolery fraternizes with vile. Senior citizenry molest our young in a never-ending cycle of sleaze and moral pedophilia. But the young are hardly the prey we think they are. Every second, they morph from starry-eyed victims to eager participants in our dehumanising ritual of violence, mental and biological aberration.

    Ours is a classic tale of Darwinian waste and mayhem, the squalor and rot of Nigerianness – a distortion of African civilisation. But we block the true import and consequences of this hideous cycle on our psyches and our future as a nation, that we might retain our integrity as brutes and eternal wildlings.

    Western science and cultural aesthetics predictably, become apparatus in our frantic attempt to revise the Nigerian horror into imaginatively palatable form. Notwithstanding our frantic lunge for substance and acclaim on frontiers where the world’s more advanced civilisations project their race and illusions of oneness, Nigeria remains hideous in name and status.

    While we make exaggerated gestures in fields of space science, information technology, industry, sports, and so on, Nigerian children die at birth and thousands of mothers die in painful labour. The youth are unemployed. Public officers loot public coffers with impunity and disregard for Rule of Law. Law enforcement officers turn violent affliction on the citizenry and society they are meant to protect; and the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government mesh in a fetid whirl of strife and plunder. Anarchy rules our hinterlands and metropolitan Nigeria.

    Within such stew and stink, Nigeria ranked 152nd of 188 countries in the 2016 African Human Development Index (HDI) according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Thus we are back at the crossroads of vile and extinction. There has been no improvement in our plight.

    While this piece too, resounds as hackneyed howl and lamentation, a regurgitation of towering monstrosities we have become, it need be said that our ultimate nemesis is the Nigerian youth. The youth epitomise the nub of discord and deathly rally ripping the tide and march to progress of our fatherland. But why do promising youth evolve like brutes and loathsome trolls? How did our once incandescent spokes of dawn erupt in moonshine?

    Many have attributed the afflictions of the Nigerian youth to bad leadership, nonstop dominance of the predatory ruling class and tiring recalcitrance of the younger generation to engage in communal and national politics in a beneficial manner. Many more would readily diagnose the maladies of the nation’s youth to structural banes and the perverse culture of citizenship by which they are weaned and ushered into adulthood.

    In the wake of plausible and often farfetched analyses, too many ‘patriots’ conveniently excuse themselves from the nexus of blame and severally propound the sad realization that Nigerians are innately incapable of self-determination and self-governance. Many have recommended the American example, the British palliative, the Chinese abracadabra and Malaysian ingenuity to mention a few, as the ultimate measures to resolve the nation’s ills. How?

    These arguments have overtime, attained a language of their own and thus evolved as a dialect of dissent and exaggerated self-abnegation. The nation’s academic elite, political and economic ruling classes frequently marshal clashing precepts as solutions and justifiable putdown of the ruling class and the lower working class as their politics dictate.

    A more damning view identifies the breadlines’ persistent ‘claims to victimhood and sense of entitlement’ as whiny and symptomatic of a dense and irresponsible citizenry. Between the conflict of hyperboles and sentimental vituperation, Nigeria suffers the affliction of intellectual miscreants and promising youth-turned-foetal-adults.

    As youths, the coordinated tragedies afflicting our consciousness daily, append the only real structure to our lives as impoverished Nigerians. The burdensome reality of fast slipping youth, the recurrent rites of bigotry and ethical quandary of coping with the strict moral code of adulthood and ideal society, obscures our understanding of life’s ultimate purpose and meaning. It spurs millions of misguided Nigerian youth to engage in a mad, desperate pursuit of fast and fleeting riches even as ripples of their actions keep hundreds of millions more in the doldrums and binds of despair.

    Consequently, the revolutionary dissent that sprouts from oppression is pitiless and unbending. It radically splits our world into ‘insensitive ruling class’ and ‘clueless lower class,’ ‘elite’ and ‘downtrodden,’ ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ It fosters even more fragmented discord that continually pits Nigerian Christians against Muslims, Hausa against Igbo, Igbo against Yoruba, Yoruba against Ijaw. It fosters spurious segmentation of our society into moral and amoral,  good against evil, and apostates versus believers. Within this poisonous clime, the Nigerian child is born. If he survives birth hour, he is violently thrust into adolescence and misshapen adulthood.

    From Boko Haram and Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) terrorism, internet fraud, cyber-terrorism, financial/bankers’ terrorism and political terrorism emblematic of the ruling class, recent developments in the country present a sad prologue to a heinous and wider conflict between the nation’s rich ruling class and the impoverished majority of the breadlines and disappearing middle-class.

    A bloody and protracted war thus ensues: this war, caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment, substandard health facilities, rising food prices, big business and government conspiracies against the Nigerian state, manifest at alarming proportions daily and by the second.

    Thus our society is flung rudderless on a seething sea of sleaze. Now that our world as we have made it, begins to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and choose to exploit ‘infinite possibilities’ in our fragility and doomsday predictions.

    The youth predictably become prominent actors in the theatre of ruin and discord. They become the muscle to actualise the ruling class’ blueprint of collapse. But if we consider our plight deeply enough, we would find that no child of the ruling class is co-opted in the drama of violence and bloodshed. They are tucked safely, abroad.

    Picture the NDA, Boko Haram, MASSOB, IPOB, OPC, and so on with sons, daughters and wives of Nigerian ruling class. Let our governors, legislators, and presidency, people these groups with their sons, daughters and wives.

    It’s about time we shunned the politics of spurious militancy, bloodshed and devastation to embrace growth and immense possibilities of progressive endeavour, like a political platform founded by the youth, for all and posterity.

  • Of hate speech, elders and leaders

    Of hate speech, elders and leaders

    In those days when they were venerated as custodians of wisdom, elders dutifully rebuked children for insulting those older than them. Foul language attracted a frown. When the matter was thought to be serious, the cane surfaced with a whack on the head.

    Not anymore.

    Respect and moderation have lost their meanings. Public discourse has taken on the colour of abuse. Politics has become toxic; a do-or-die affair.

    Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo’s warning that hate speech will be treated as terrorism has somehow dampened the vociferous push for the dismemberment of Nigeria. The argument has been downgraded to restructuring. The debates are exciting.

    But what is hate speech? Is there really a clear correlation between hate speech and terrorism?

    The Arewa youths who issued the Igbo an October deadline to quit the North have since withdrawn their threat. Our hearts were pounding. It was like awaiting the arrival of some hurricane. But Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) leader Nnamdi Kanu keeps opening his mouth wide.

    We need to draw the line between hate speech and all that blabbing and babbling by our politicians. Besides, we should do nothing to endanger freedom of speech, which is a fundamental pillar of democracy.

    Consider Senator  Isa Misau (APC, Bauchi), whom the police have been seeking to take in since he levelled some allegations against the leadership. He said officers paid as much as N2.5m for special promotion through the Police Service Commission (PSC). Furious, the police went after the retired officer and accused him of deserting the Force.

    The lawmaker went ballistic. He hurled more allegations at the police and threatened to report the matter to the Senate.

    Who will investigate the police? All we hear are threats against Misau, who has been accused of everything, including forgery, defamation and perjury. None of these charges has been proven.  I suspect the police may one day slam the gentleman with a charge for making hate speeches against their revered leadership.

    The Senate will respond by summoning the police chief, who must come in uniform, to explain why he allowed his good offices to be used in fractions aimed at lowering  the esteem of a distinguished senator.

    A bill that will hold the record of being the fastest to be passed into law seems to be on the way to the Senate. The hate speech bill has won the heart of the much respected Senate. Renowned law teacher Prof Itse Sagay had accused the lawmakers of fleecing the treasury by taking home huge salaries and allowances, which remain secret to the taxpayer. Instead of denying this with facts and figures, senators tore at him with invectives.

    Unrepentant, the professor challenged the lawmakers to come clean on the allegations. They refused and accused him of making hate speeches against the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We all know that the Senate harbours our distinguished men and women of whom we are so proud. Hate speeches against them will not be allowed to gain credibility and thereby bring the lawmakers ridicule, odium and scorn from right thinking Nigerians.

    Nevertheless, it won’t  be out of place to ask: when will the Senate bring down the gavel on this allegation of jumbo salaries and allowances by baring it all? Are senators afraid of the public backlash if their pay is found to be indeed outrageous? Or is it a matter of mere pride – that the salary and allowances are private and personal?  But the cash comes from the public purse, doesn’t it?

    Will Sagay now be seized and hurled before the senators for alleged terrorism to test the law?

    Just as Misau has stood by his allegations against the police, Senator Aisha “Mama Taraba”Alhassan has remained unshaken in her resolve to dump President Muhammadu Buhari for former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar should the latter choose to run for president in 2019. She said so on a visit to Atiku and sealed it all with an interview on the BBC Hausa Service.

    Some patriots, including those who call themselves Buharists (I still don’t get what that means) , among them Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, are falling over one another to defend the President. They are calling for Alhassan’s head, accusing her of disloyalty and of making hate speeches against Buhari, who has so far demonstrated the wisdom of a clever old man in this matter. Mama Taraba remains the minister of Women Affairs. Sycophancy, indeed, has its limits.

    Alhassan’s courage and sincerity in a society that lacks bold men and women and hacks down its brave ones have been praised. Hers is surely no hate speech. But many have descended on El-Rufai for showing his hand in the matter. They have gone into the archives to dig out what his former boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, said of him in reply to what El-Rufai wrote about him in his book, “The accidental public servant”, which many have predicted to be the forerunner of a more current volume to be titled, “The accidental governor”.

    Of El-Rufai, Obasanjo wrote: ” Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological…I recognised his weaknesses, the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but only to Nasir El-Rufai… My vivid recollection of him is penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories and his inability to sustain loyalty for long…”

    A memo El-Rufai wrote to President Buhari in which he declared the APC a failure has bobbed up from  nowhere. All this in an attempt to expound the view that of the governor, it cannot be said “he is as straight as a gun”.

    So long for a Buharist and his ilk.

    Just after the Mama Taraba bombshell, Atiku stoked up a fresh argument, saying he had been abandoned by the APC, which he claimed to have helped to win the 2015 election. Besides, he was obviously saying that he had been tarred – wrongly, he insists – with the brush of corruption. He challenged anybody with proof of his alleged corruption to bring it up or keep quiet forever.

    Poor Atiku. So discomfited was he  that he told his traducers to purge themselves of the wrong feeling that every rich man must have made it not by  dint of hard work but by some undue advantage – fraud, to be precise.

    He said he did not become the vice-president in 1999 as a pauper because he had been a successful investor after his retirement from the Customs Service. “If Atiku is a thief merely because of his resourcefulness and successful investments, my political enemies should tell Nigerians the source of their stupendous wealth,” Atiku said. He did not name his political enemies. Was the Turaki Adamawa afraid of being charged with making hate speeches?

    There is no need to get emotional over these matters, Your Excellency. The hate speech law will soon be here to put the purveyors of these allegations against you in their place. You are not the only one being maligned.

    The other day a friend sent me a photograph of the devastation of the hurricane that has ravaged parts of the United States with the caption: “Florida. We thank God that our own disaster is politicians defrauding us, not nature.”

    Now a note of caution to all those who -without proof – accuse the Senate of harbouring criminals, liars, pedophiles, forgers and drug pushers:  Watch out. The hate speech law will soon be activated and you may face terrorism charges.

     

    Biafra: Time to roll back the tanks

    The crisis in some parts of the Southeast should not be allowed to escalate. The separatist leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is on bail, but he keeps rocking the boat through his speeches, in violation of his  bail terms. He appears to have successfully rallied behind his cause a large army of youths, some of who have sworn to go the whole hog with him.

    The military has launched “Operation Python Dance” to rein in criminals in the Southeast. It has said that the action is not targeted at the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB).

    A group of soldiers passing through Kanu’s home have clashed with the activists. IPOB said somebody died. The military claimed nobody died. Soldiers stormed the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) office in Umuahia, smashing work tools.

    A policeman was killed yesterday in Port Harcourt.

    The Igbo man is naturally endowed with skills to excel in a united Nigeria. What he should push for is an environment where he can use his God-given talents without any hinderance, and a fair share of the national patrimony. Not secession.

    Boko Haram is still on the rampage. Kidnappers are on the loose. Armed robbers remain in business and poverty is rumbling through the land.  This is not the time for another national upheaval.

    Let’s muffle the drums of war. Let’s roll back the tanks.

  • Reflecting on yet another ASUU strike

    Many of us in Nigeria and particularly in the education sector have lost count of the number of strikes by university workers. The first strike that I remember vividly because I participated in it was the “industrial action” in 1973 taken against our employers, the federal government which owned the universities of Ibadan and Lagos, and the state governments that were the owners of the university of Nigeria (Nsukka) Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Ife. I was then in the University of Ibadan – Jos Campus. The University of Ibadan under Professor Adeoye Lambo  was invited to establish a university college in Jos by Joseph Gomwalk, an alumnus  zoology graduate of Ibadan who as police commissioner was the military governor of the then Benue-Plateau State.  Stories had it that he approached Ibadan after Ahmadu Bello University for political reasons turned him down. The college was therefore established in 1972 under the energetic and indefatigable Professor Emmanuel Ayandele. University staff then were not highly paid but they earned enough comparable with others in the public sector.

    When the strike was called, the Yakubu Gowon government reacted negatively and gave an ultimatum that university staff should either call off the strike or pack out of university accommodation. This was a wakeup call for senior university people who were living comfortably in university accommodation without the thought of owning their own houses. The government’s tough approach did the trick and the strike was called off. The university people learnt a bitter lesson from the experience. Those who had been in service for a long time began to look for land to build their own houses and they set the example for the younger ones to follow. I remember that Governor J.D .Gomwalk gave us plots in the GRA for us to build our homes in Jos. Some paid for the plots of land, but out of short-sightedness, most of us felt we were too young to be thinking of personal houses. Those also were the years of idealism when young people like us despised materialism and primitive accumulation of wealth.

    In those days, there was only one union in the university system unlike now when there are as many as seven or more if one includes the various unions in the university teaching hospitals. It will be wonderful if ASUU can just be “Association and Staff Union of Universities “to embrace all the existing unions and every category of staff can enter whatever salary scale approved for the entire university system at its own level. This will take care of academic, administrative, technical, clerical and cleaning staff. With the trend noticeable in private universities and universities in the rest of the world, there will soon be no need of those doing “bullshit” jobs in the universities.” Bullshit “jobs according to London School of Economics anthropologist David Graeber are jobs that add no value to the economy and that can be dispensed with and the people doing them know that their positions are superfluous. There are many jobs like that in our country including jobs of ambassadors! While on this, my rather sometimes probing ambassador-friend, Dapo Fafowora once cynically challenged me by saying many university people have no skills and wondered what skill I had. I mumbled something about being a teacher, writer, public intellectual and so on. But on reflection my job may not be critical to society as that of garbage collectors! I have just read a book with the title of “Utopia for realists and how we can get there” by a Dutch historian by the name of Rutger Bregman. The book has kept me thinking. He gave a comparative importance of garbage collectors in New York going on strike and after six stinking days, the mayor had to be begging them with huge salaries and pleading with them to save the city from being overrun by rats and stench. He compared it with the case of bankers who went on strike for six months in Ireland while people devised other mechanics of shifting wealth from one to the other!

    The point I want to make is that while the job of teaching from primary to tertiary levels of education is very important and should be recognized and adequately compensated, this must be balanced with other critical sectors needing resources. There is no point asking for the moon during a period of economic recession. By the way, I hope this time around, government will consolidate salaries and “earned or unearned allowances” which have been the knotty problem for university administrators in recent times. The second point I want to make is to ask how adequately have we as teachers transmitted to our students the right kind of culture that would be beneficial to our country. Do we impart the right kind of knowledge to our students?. Do we just equip our students for the work place or do we put emphasis on the good of society rather than what is personally beneficial ?Of course there is the eternal argument of the role of parents and society in shaping the character of young people who will grow up to hold leadership positions in our society.  Our universities should aspire to be incubators of ideas and centres of patents that could be harnessed to dominate our environment and make our lives better rather than shunning out esoteric researches that are totally irrelevant to the questions of development and societal progress.

    I will like to see academics get more involved in debating the future political, structural and economic trajectory of this country instead of just taking care of ourselves alone. There is the debate going on in western societies about the desirability of paying  everybody a basic universal  income irrespective of whether  one was working or not. The present  government is doing something like this following on the paradigm established by Kayode Fayemi in Ekiti State where poor elderly women were being paid N5000 per month. Imagine the effect it will have on our country if all unemployed people were given a living basic income monthly. This may sound an outrageous suggestion. But it is being done in some places and we must be thinking of how to adapt it to our clime. Imagine if all those who want to work and cannot find jobs were each paid N20,000 a month with promise of housing along the line. What this will mean is that we will have to cap the maximum anybody earns in this country. This will mean we will radically reduce salaries and allowances of federal, state and local government officials and their bureaucracies. If all were catered for, we will not need a huge army, police, prisons and many other security organizations.  Whatever is saved on these institutions will go into the basic fund from which the income will be paid to the masses of our hungry people. The fact that this sounds idealistic does not mean it cannot be done. There are trials on the universal basic income concept albeit on limited scale going on in Canada, New Zealand and in some places even in the USA.

    Before we arrive at this future utopia, I will like to suggest that the universities should be asked to have one union embracing all workers who work in the universities. If the purpose of higher education is teaching, research and public service, then everybody in the university system should work symbiotically with each other. Eventually the supporting staff in the university system will gradually reduce as it has all over the world because of increasing advance in technology. The days of clerks and secretaries are gone or going in many universities. In future, budgets of universities will be solely for research and technical support and the vast administrative paraphernalia in the universities will wither away. Universities will also gradually not be involved in providing municipal services and good universities will be able to generate their own power and provide water for their own use.

    Finally our governments must realize that universities are expensive to run and heads of governments must avoid after dinner announcements about opening of new universities without counting the cost. All this glib talk of universities of petroleum, university of transportation, marine university must stop. We should consolidate and possibly merge the ones we have so as to save costs. The government by giving license to all sorts of characters to establish universities has demeaned and devalued the cultural significance of universities.  Some of the private universities, especially the sectarian ones and a few others are excellent institutions contributing to shaping the character of the youth while also imparting knowledge to them but some of the existing private universities are caricatures of universities and fraudulent institutions sucking money out of deluded Nigerians looking for easy way out of this rather difficult Nigerian educational environment.

  • Chibok boy with nine lives

    Chibok boy with nine lives

    Only the will to live and the grace of God could have sustained little Ali Ahmadu up till now. He was three when the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents returned to his community,  Chibok in Borno State. As usual, they came to loot, rape and kill. Three or so days earlier, they had invaded the Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) and abducted over 200 pupils. Unknown to many in the country,  the insurgents still had the nerve to return to Chibok to wreak havoc again.

    While the nation was worried over the abducted girls, Boko Haram went on another murderous mission to Chibok. The sect cared less about the storm generated by its action. To the group, it had done nothing – it was all part of its script to cause chaos and make the country ungovernable. Since the government of the day pretended that no girl was abducted in Chibok in the wee hours of April 15, 2014, it is not surprising that it kept quiet when the insurgents went back few days later.

    There was bedlam that day as they went after the villagers, who took to their heels. They ran helter-skelter without any particular destination in mind. All they wanted was to get to somewhere safe in order to avoid the wrath of Boko Haram. Expectant mothers with children strapped to their backs and also pulling one or two other kids along were a spectacle to behold as they ran for their lives. There was no help in sight; they just ran blindly to wherever their legs took them. It was another black day in Chibok, but the incident went unreported.

    However, the story of that fateful day is taking another dimension because of six-year-old Ali. Perhaps, the toddler was kept alive by God so that we will forever remember what happened not only to him, but also countless others that day. There is no record of the incident anywhere, but what other evidence do we need once we see the wheelchair bound Ali, who epitomises the hell the Chibok people went through in the hands of Boko Haram. We do not know the hour that Boko Haram struck, but Ali’s pitiable picture tells plainly the story of the sect’s atrocious act. As Fela would say, they left sorrow,  tears and blood.

    But Ali survived the evil act at a cost.  His spinal cord was broken. We do not know what happened to his expectant mother.  Did she deliver the baby? Her mother and baby alive? Was Ali the only survivor in his family? A mother’s love cannot be quantified. All Ali’s mother wanted was to get herself, son and unborn child to safety. But as she ran from the invading fundamentalists, she fell and Ali fell off her back and the terrorists overran the boy with their motorcycles.

    Narrating Ali’s pathetic story in Abuja on Sunday before the boy and his aunt, Mrs Hannatu Madu, left for Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), founder of GIPLC Nuhu Kwajafa said : “With mother and child seriously injured, Ali was kept under a tree for about three days without any form of medication. He was bleeding from mouth and nose. Ali has remained bedridden as a result of his spinal cord injury”.  GIPLC and the Dickens Sanomi Foundation are collaborating to ensure that Ali walks again to fulfil his destiny. It is a miracle that he has survived up till now giving the condition under which he has lived since he broke his spinal cord.

    That he did not die under those circumstances show the grace of God upon his life. Besides, the boy has also shown uncommon will to live. He has held on to hope in the last three years and we can only join him in prayers that his corrective surgery will be successful.  Ali came to limelight few months ago when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo received him and some Chibok leaders at the State House in Abuja. May be, the foundation got to know about his case during that visit.  The foundation has embarked on a worthy cause and we pray for a happy ending.

    As little as the boy is,  he knows how dire his condition is and he has been praying to God for healing. Before his trip, he prayed repeatedly in Hausa : “Ina so insake tafiya da kafana…Don Allah ataimakamu…Don Allah. Ina so in je makaranta”. (“I want to begin to walk with my legs again. For God’s sake,  assist me. I want to go to school”).

    What an irony.  Those who wanted to kill him are campaigning against western education under the guise of propagating Islam,  a religion which enjoins its faithful to seek knowledge even in distant land. As he has prayed, so shall God do unto him.  May Ali walk back home on his legs.

  • Senate vs Sagay

    Our National Assembly members have demonstrated from the onset of the fourth republic that their loyalty was to their members rather than to the nation as some of them tactlessly announced that they were in a hurry to recoup their investments having sold their properties to contest the election. It was therefore obvious that a total package of about N20m for senators and N18m for members of the lower house approved by Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission was not going to be adequate for the needs, let alone the greed of our lawmakers

    It was not long before they went ahead to appropriate about N159b for themselves and in spite of public indignation refused to subject its disbursement to public scrutiny. Not satisfied, they openly demanded bribes from Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) or opted to hijack their projects as was the case with contracts for the rural electrification projects which were awarded to some fictitious companies owned by the lawmakers. Ministerial nominees were also forced to part with huge sums of money before confirmation. Haunted by financial scandals, The Punch in an editorial titled “Time to tame greedy and reckless National Assembly” in its edition of February 1, 2016, said: “By their greed, corruption, opaqueness, insensitivity and monumental incompetence, parliamentarians, since 1999, have stunted the entrenchment of democracy and atrophied development”.

    Our self-serving lawmakers have little regard for public opinion. Their collective response to critics of their financial recklessness until the latest call for restructuring as a possible solution, has always been the same – attack the messenger in order to divert attention from the message. Not even Obasanjo, whom they mischievously call their father, is spared whenever the issue of their financial recklessness is raised. He narrowly escaped impeachment in 2000 and 2005 for standing between his ‘children’ and their criminal padding of the budget sometimes with as much as N600b. Obasanjo has continued to refer to corrupt members of the National Assembly as ‘armed robbers’.

    Lamido Sanusi, the then CBN governor following his submission during a 2013 lecture he delivered at Igbinedion University where he had said cornering of N136.26b or 25.44% of government overhead by the National Assembly was unhealthy for the economy suffered the same fate. Ndoma –Egba, the then Deputy Senate Leader (now stalwart of APC) did not only dismiss Sanusis’s remarks as ‘a calculated attempt to bring the National Assembly to disrepute and a plot to incite the public against us”, he moved a motion that he along with his Minister of Finance, be summoned to defend themselves before the chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Iyiola Omisore, currently repaying about N1b he, according to EFCC, fraudulently received from Dazuki, ex-President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser(NSA), to fight the Osun 2014 gubernatorial election.

    But confronted last week with N14m and N8m as monthly take-home pay for senators and their lower house counterparts, figures Channels TV claimed it obtained exclusively, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi,  the chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, changed the narrative. He now says – “For us in the National Assembly, the question that needs to be asked is “what the cost of having democracy is and what is the cost of not having democracy?”

    Unfortunately, Senator Abdullahi and the insensitive lawmakers he speaks for, have sustained their war against our people especially the most vulnerable 112 million who live below poverty line because they rightly believe all of us suffer from collective amnesia. But nothing can be more humiliating than Abdulahi’s claim that the greed and financial recklessness of our lawmakers are in pursuit of democratic ethos.

    Realising that our legislators are beyond reproach, Sagay, who recently spoke at the Wole Soyinka Annual Public Lecture at the University of Benin, had called for urgent restructuring of the nation into regions and return to the 1963 Constitution, modified to suit our present circumstances as the only way to stop the bumper pay being received by the senators.  He insisted that from information at his disposal, “a Nigerian Senator earns about N29 million a month and over N3 billion a year”. He went on to state how he arrived at his figures:  “Basic salary N2,484,245.50; hardship allowance, N1,242, 122.70; constituency allowance N4, 968, 509.00; furniture allowance N7, 452, 736.50; newspaper allowance N1, 242, 122.70; N1,863,184.12; entertainment N828,081.83; personal assistant N621,061.37; vehicle maintenance allowance N1,863,184.12; leave allowance N248,424.55; severance gratuity N7, 425,736.50; and motor vehicle allowance N9, 936,982.00.”

    Sagay also added ”Wardrobe allowance N621, 061.37; recess allowance N248, 424.55″.  “These are besides budget padding, which is a stable means of drilling money from the poor people of this nation. If you have true federalism, that money will not be available for them to blow”, Sagay concluded.

    All that was needed to invalidate Sagay’s figures which the lawmakers claimed were based on beer parlour a rumour was to confirm or deny if those headings exist and if they do how much was allocated to each heading. But they substituted that simple procedure with attack on Sagay’s person. After falsely accusing him of employing ‘uncouth, unprintable words’ and of ’hate speech, they deployed ‘love’ words like “senile, jaded, rustic and out-dated” to describe noble Professor Sagay.

    Sagay should take solace. I can assure Professor Sagay that the inimitable Victor Olabisi Onabanjo of Aiyekoto fame who often laced his bitter truth with humour can even from his grave see the purity of his heart and the nobility of his intentions.

    And what would have been Onabanjo’s response to the Senate’s unwarranted virulent attack on Sagay’s person? He would have simply admonished those who live in glass houses not to throw stones by asking – Are we speaking of the same house who, Gabriel Suswan, recently governor of Benue and who as two terms member of the Lower House authoritatively declared that of the unwieldy 360 members of the house, only 20% that contribute to discussions at plenaries are literate?

    He would have in addition reminded our lawmakers that it was not Sagay but a distinguished and respectable member of the Senate that likened the behaviour of one of their cantankerous member to a dog, thug and tout. Was it not in one of these hallowed chambers turned-house of comedy where a member who a probe confirmed obtained a third class degree from our local university after falsely claiming to be an alumni of many prestigious universities across the world, celebrated his achievement by adorning himself with an academic gown reserved for only those who earned doctoral degrees?

    Aiyekoto would have also reminded us that we find those who “talks like a man who is constantly under the influence of some substance or who are constantly agitated” in a house that harbours alleged drug pushers or those facing EFCC charges for financial malfeasance or earning two salaries in the guise of pensions when the real pensioners are dying on the queue after a lifelong service to their father land.

    I am only guessing what Aiyekoto (the world hates the truth) would have said in the face of an unprovoked attack on a patriot by indecent people some of who should be behind bars.

  • Courage in the time of brutes and foetal adults

    I have seen courage flower in the face of the impossible. Such valour is frequently ascribed to an innate strength and humaneness of the courageous. It is no physical strength. And very few of the world’s bravest warriors possess such valour that defies brawn and accentuates moral vigour.

    Victor John, 15, showed such courage in a damning moment; thanks to John, the entire clans constituting Ungwan Sankwai, Tyekum and Ungwan Gata villages of Bondon district, Kaura LGA of Kaduna State were saved from total extermination by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

    Although many of the bereaved are wailing the brutal massacre of loved ones even as you read, the survivors owe their lives to the 15-year old who sighted the invaders marching on the community. John alerted his father and reportedly went from house to house to wake up their neighbours and warn them of imminent death. Eventually, his father evacuated some of his siblings but his mother and other siblings weren’t so lucky; they were hacked to death by the invaders.

    Like the Kaduna teen, Hugh Thompson, an American army pilot could be said to have exhibited moral courage in the face of odds. Thompson landed his helicopter between a platoon of American soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. Then he ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. For this act of moral courage, Thompson, like John, suffered repercussion; he was hounded and reviled by the establishment.

    Such is the consequence of moral courage. It begets a price. In the case of Victor John, it cost him his mother and siblings. And for being morally courageous, Thompson was vilified by the military – the establishment attempted to conceal the massacre and court-martial him.

    Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. It involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; to spurn the invigorating embrace of comradeship; to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage comes persecution and any other form of repercussion that exposes the individual as a defenseless mark to be preyed upon.

    Gani Fawehinmi had moral courage, so did Martin Luther King. Malcolm X had it and Wole Soyinka epitomises it. Predictably, perpetuators of such morality are either maligned by fate or ascribed rogue status by the state. Routinely they are accused and charged for treason. But in their touted notoriety subsists the irony of an incontrovertible metaphor; they usually represent the best of mankind and civilization in their time.

    The contemporary youth however, personify a very sad contradiction of humanity and courage epitomised by John, Thompson, and the late Fawehinmi to mention a few. Essentially, they represent Nigeria’s sad decent into the gallows of inhumanity.

    Like a fugitive quirk you find no word for, the contemporary youth grows like a scar on his clan and the nation’s psyche. Too much of what he symbolises indicates decadence and elevates rot, thus the manifestation of a Nigerian youth divide incapacitated to the finer traits of citizenship and humanity.

    This glaring lack manifests virtually in every aspect of our life as a nation; the Nigerian society evolves as a perfect reflection of the nation’s youth. Given the quality of the nation’s youth, the country suffers the preponderance of cowards and shadows of men.

    From a tender age, the youth is socialized to be corrupt and inhumane; the process starts very early in life in the family unit. Many parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see their child cheat and oppress his peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see him evolve into a ‘lovable’ brute at a tender age; they claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

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

    These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason; parents nurture them in their wards and the latter perpetuate them in attitude, till they start procreating and perpetuating within their lineage, grosser forms of shamefulness and bestiality.

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

    Such wards are trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually they mature into foetal adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena.

    Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grows to prodigious bulk, as cultivated by society and custom. In the end, we have brutes and foetal adults running our lives and determining our future.

    At this juncture, many would perhaps dispute and claim that such shameful percentage constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 170 million-strong families or thereabouts. Really? If that be the case, why is it that their voices and deeds resonate and tower above the humanity of the ‘moral few’ – if such divide ever truly exists in contemporary Nigeria?

    This minute, Nigeria manifests as the tainted fantasy of the perverted mob home and abroad. The virtues that build character, foster community and sustain a nation-state, from honesty, self-sacrifice to transparency and sharing, are ridiculed  everyday in public sphere as rubes silly enough to cling to unrealistic fantasies are celebrated on the now ubiquitous reality TV charade and social media.

    It is due to a lack of moral courage and character that the Nigerian youth tirelessly obsess about the decadent and perpetrate the obscene just to be seen as hip and flowing with the times. Hence the attractiveness of the vulgar, such as wild, ‘Reality TV’ sex, expedient sexuality, terrorism, corruption, to mention a few.

    The youth has been flipped upside-down and inside-out that it becomes increasingly difficult to identify by them, what constitutes acceptable values and culture representative of the Nigerian spirit and psyche. Thus today we praise the woman who tries to be the meanest career girl in office and applaud the man who tries to be the prettiest drag queen in the bar.

    Consequently, the country embraces depravity and perpetuates society on pathetic illusions. So doing, it amplifies the kind of twilight disconnect that accelerates the disappearance of dying empires. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is agitation for acquittal of a corrupt public officer, confused sexuality, or insidious civilization, Nigeria takes surefooted strides into moral and cultural extinction.

  • Terrorism in Europe: Moroccan connection

    Catalonia is an important part of the kingdom of Spain with separate national aspirations and its capital city of Barcelona is the second biggest city in Spain after Madrid and it is arguably the most beautiful and most cosmopolitan city in Spain. It was once host to the Olympics Games and it is host to the famous football team “Barca”. This is the city and neighboring other two towns that were reeling under terrorist attacks which at the last count have led to more than twenty people dead including some of the terrorists and tens of people seriously wounded. For more than a decade, Spain has been spared of terrorist attack  at least of the Islamic variant. The last time Spain had anything to do with terrorism was the fact that one of those Saudis, named Mohammad Atta, who piloted one of the planes during the 9/11 attack on New York once lived in Spain.

    The Iberian peninsula still known to the Arab world as Andalusia, was for more than five centuries, off and on, either partly or totally under Muslim rule. The most effective period of Muslim rule was when a caliphate existed in the Iberian peninsula from 929 to 1031 and and this was followed by the Almoravid’s (Al murabitun) conquest of Spain from 1031 to 1130. In spite of Christian reconquest of Spain  between 1130 and 1492, the blood of  Moroccan Arabs flow in the veins of many spaniards. Perhaps because of this and the proximity of Spain to Morocco in particular, Muslims particularly from Morocco until recently have always been welcome in Spain.

    Moroccans historically have been tolerant and moderate Muslims who shared with others in the Mediterranean, common cuisine and love for good life of wine and song. Wine is openly consumed in restaurants in the major Moroccan cities of Rabat, Fez, Marrakech and Casablanca. The sharifian dynasty established during the Arab conquest of Morocco  circa 700 to 900  provide a rallying point for the country.  The Sharif or sultan since the 19th century has been a modernizing monarchy perhaps as a surviving strategy in the face of European imperialism. The kingdom likes to see itself as a constitutional monarchy although even today the Moroccan king is still too powerful to fit into the category of constitutional monarchy found elsewhere in places like Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. Morocco enjoys political stability unseen in many Arab and North African countries. It attracts because of this, western investment and political and military support. It is a major ally of the United States  in its fight against terrorism. When many Arab regimes were shaken to their foundations during the so-called Arab Spring, Morocco stood like a rock of Gibraltar against salafist jihadists, only making minor political  adjustment to contain demands for reforms.

    The political stability in the kingdom has not translated to economic prosperity and this has led to massive migrations of Moroccans to continental Europe particularly to Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany where they mostly did the jobs such as cleaning the streets, removing of garbage and other low income jobs that the Europeans were not eager to do. Through natural growth, the number of this immigrants has increased exponentially to the point that they have become visible minorities in these European countries to the point where politicians particularly in the Netherlands have exploited their presence for political leverage and support. The cultural divide especially religious divide has made it impossible for the immigrants and their children to be assimilated into the wider European culture. The Moroccans involved in these acts of Islamic terrorism are usually not the immigrants themselves but their children.

    In the same week Moroccans were involved in acts of wanton terrorism in Spain, they also showed up in Finland where an apparently deranged young man killed two women before he was incapacitated and brought down by police bullets on his feet. Finland has never witnessed this kind of terror before until now. A few weeks ago, a young Libyan in Manchester killed scores of young people at a musical concert. Some months earlier, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Nice in the Mediterranean coast of France were brought to their knees by young Muslims most of who were born in Europe. What is now new since Nice, Berlin  and London is the weapon of choice being employed by these terrorists to inflict maximum casualties. This new weapon is the automobile, either cars or trucks. Vehicles are driven into crowds of people at maximum speed with intention to kill. All the people targeted are innocent people. Be they men or women, children or adults, Christians or Muslims, firm or infirm or black, brown, yellow or white.

    The question to ask is for what purpose? Killing people at random and for no just cause than to attract attention is absolutely senseless and insane and is not in consonance with any Islamic beliefs. Even if these perpetrators of murder are angry with society for any reason,  the terrorism they indulged in is not the way to air their grievances. Unfortunately these people are giving the religion of Islam a bad  name to the effect that innocent Muslims are being tarred with the same brush of terrorism as those of the terrorists.

    What is to be done and who is to blame? One of the fathers of the Moroccan terrorists in Barcelona blamed the Imam of the mosque attended by his two children involved in acts of terrorism who were shot dead as being responsible for indoctrination of his children. Others blame some majority Sunni countries in the Middle East for spreading hate, salafism,wahabbism and fanaticism generally.  There is no doubt that some rich people in the Middle East, driven by more religious enthusiasm than wisdom are funding without control their own brand and interpretation of Islam. We can also point to the failure of society that may have been responsible for alienation of children born in these societies but  who are treated as aliens. There is also the failure of intelligence on the part of security organizations in host countries of the immigrant young people.

    Whatever reasons that may be adduced to explain this recrudescence of terrorism in Spain and other places would still not justify wanton killing of innocent people. Short of turning all centres of major cities into pedestrian area without vehicles allowed in, this problem will persist. Even if motorists were banned from city centres, it is inconceivable to ban them from all city roads which means determined killers can still hunt for their preys. At the end of the day, peace can only be built in human hearts through change of heart, correct teaching of the pillars of whatever faith we hold dear, and through mankind realizing that we are all children of God in spite of whatever apparent physical or religious differences we can identify.

    The immediate consequences of what happened in the weekend of August 17-20 is that Morocco and Moroccans will be stigmatized. I know Moroccans are basically good people. I have personal experience of Moroccans and some friends among  these generally friendly and tolerant people. The economy of the country depends hugely on tourism unlike any Arab country. Morocco is not like any Arab country in fact most of the people are arabised berbers with substantial portion of the population being descendants of African people. Morocco has always looked towards Africa rather than the Middle East and its  Sunni Islam is tempered by history and geography and this makes Morocco unique of the countries in the Maghreb. It is hoped that this time of national infamy will pass and Morocco and Moroccans will come into their own once again.