The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Pro-poor development in Nigeria

    The concept of pro-poor development was conceived by the Commonwealth around the year 2000 or there about. I actually served on a pro-poor development committee headed by DrMahoman Singh who subsequently became Prime Minister of India for almost a decade. Before this time he had served as minister of finance in India so he brought to the job of chairman of pro-poor development committee, experience, gravitas and knowledge. A document was issued after our endeavour and presented to the Commonwealth summit in Abuja in 2004. The thrust of the recommendation is that development plans in the developing countries should primarily target reduction of poverty. Yes important as are infrastructural development such as highways, railways, seaports, telecommunications maybe, if they do not address poverty-reduction, then we have failed. Pro-poor development focuses on issues such as primary healthcare, rural economy, primary school education, population controland status of rural women,land distribution, potable water, rural irrigation and other forms of social welfare schemes that help the poor.Above all, it focuses on how to help the poor come out of poverty .But while still poor, the poor must not be left behind in their poverty but must be assisted through financial transfers to them as is the case of the dole in the United Kingdom and welfare cheques in the USA.

    When Clement Attlee formed the post Second World War Labour government in Great Britain in 1945, he was faced with the suffering of the bedraggled poor citizens of his country who had just emerged from almost six years of bitter conflict with Nazi Germany and Hideki Tojo’s imperial Japan. Prostrate Britain, helped by the United States started to rebuild, but Attlee rightly said development was about people and he embarked on fundamental transformation of his country.

    Against entrenched interest, he decided to socialize medical practice through the national health scheme through which no one should be denied medical assistance because of poverty. In spite of the enemies of the scheme, it has survived until this day. Attlee also introduced the dole by which all unemployed people were paid some living allowance to tide them over until employment was found. Even though this was sometimes abused, it has also survived frontal attacks by the Conservative or Tory party which has consistently argued that the scheme bred laziness and social dependency. The third plank of the Labour Party’s transformation was massive building of what were known as council flats to accommodate those too poor to build or buy houses of their own and finally opening up of the education space to all the citizens for the purpose of upward mobility of the poor.

    This social welfare state has been copied by many countries in the world including the United States which has adopted the financial assistance to the poor. Obamacare affordable medical insurance has deprecated what is popularly dismissed as socialized medicine. The movement of Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party in recent times has convinced everybody that socialism is no longer a dirty political word in the United States. The attractiveness of socialism since 1917 communist revolution in Russia was because of its relevance to alleviating the plight of the poor. The Bible is categorically states that we will always have the poor among us and therefore directs all people of faith to take care of the poor.

    What then is the relevance of this in Nigeria? The Boko Haram phenomenon and the insurgency in the Niger Delta and other ethnic protest movements are largely manifestations of poverty. Although there may be arguments as to whether there is a linkage with or direct correlation of poverty with terrorism, there is no doubt in my mind that in Nigeria insurgency feeds on poverty. Yes the Arab terrorism may not be directly linked with poverty. Disparity between the poor world and the rich world however provides fertile grounds for terrorist seeds to germinate. It follows therefore that to tackle our problems in Nigeria, we have to take the twin road of pacification and poverty eradication. While having the Kalashnikov in one hand, we must have bread or tuwo shinkafa in the other hand. We must also not wait for insurgency to break out before we have a strategy to tackle it. We have to be proactive.  Nigeria is hopefully coming out of the war in the South-south and the North-east and we must approach our poverty programmes as fundamentally as other post-conflict countries have done.

    The federal government must take the lead in all this by creating a social welfare department or ministry appropriately staffed with demographers, social work experts, sociologists, epidemiologists, economists and local government experts to bring out schemestargeted at the poor. These must be practical programmes that can be implemented immediately. We must not try to reinvent the wheel. There are programmes that have worked in other parts of the world that we can domesticate to fit our peculiar circumstances, needs and our financial resources. All states of the federation must take a leaf out of the suggested federal programme and if need be the federal programme can be devolved to the states with appropriate funding but with strict supervision to avoid misappropriation and misapplication of funds. I am happy to hear that the federal government is planning to embrace the Aregbesola children feeding programme and the Kayode Fayemi monthly support scheme for the elderly and apply these across the nation. The recent announcement of a massive house-building programme by this government is policy in the right direction. We must however ensure that these do not become another financial jamboree for party hags and henchmen. When houses are built they must be tailored to the needs of the poor and they must be affordable. In building these houses, government must induce young Nigerian jobless engineering graduates to form companies to bid for contracts and government must deliberately favour them. This same approach should be the case for catering and nutrition science graduates in the award of contracts to prepare food for school children. In all these, government must deliberately try to help the unemployed youth, the poor and the elderly. In doing this government will be creating wealth, tackling unemployment and poverty and removing grievance which fuels insurgency and terrorism.

  • Still on Buhari’s ‘demons’

    There is an epiphany of morality in President Muhammadu Buhari, a vision of hope and romanticised ‘Change’ that the severely exploited and hapless citizenry would die for. Buhari rode to power chanting change and promising a radical, progressive departure from the pilfering and profligacy that characterised public office before his emergence.

    Buhari’s emergence however, complicates our perverse dynamics of corruption. His immediate past predecessor was no revolutionary – Goodluck Jonathan was no hero and he never pretended to be one. He was not interested in upsetting the status quo or ridding the country of sleaze. He understood that Nigeria throve on vice thus he simply played the role of passive leader and enabler. His infamous ‘Stealing is not corruption’ declaration accentuated imagery of his leadership as a moral and intellectual aberration.

    Enter Muhammadu Buhari, the redeemed dictator, self-proclaimed martyr and moral crusader. Buhari’s publicised distaste for corruption incites the separation and tension between moral and amoral personae. The attendant backlash from profiteers from the corrupt order, further accentuates the thrill of seduction and revolt against the incumbent president’s  anti-corruption campaign.

    In the ensuing melee, hard choices have to be made and unpopular decisions taken, often to the detriment of the nation’s longsuffering citizenry. Although there are estimated benefits in the long run, very few Nigerians are ready to accept that the obnoxious hike in pump price of Premium Methylated Spirit (PMS) from N87 to N145 for instance, was a necessary evil amid the country’s bordello of chaos and institutionalised corruption. And a fewer number of Nigerians, including Camp Buhari, are willing to accept a further hike in fuel price.

    Many more have lost patience with Buhari’s shortcomings at steering the nation to safe waters from its current abyss of strife and corruption. Notwithstanding his seeming incapacities, you can’t help but admire Buhari’s his valour and resolve to recoup the country’s looted funds from public officers that served in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s highly corrupt and disgraceful administration.

    However, Buhari’s touted anti-corruption fight should only be taken seriously when culprits get sent to jail to serve sentences that befit their crimes. Nigerians should neither accept nor entertain any attempt at granting looters of public fund the luxury of ‘plea bargain.’

    If Buhari grants them such right, then he would be legitimising their corrupt acts and he would by default, have supported and applauded the mass murders and impoverishment committed by every public officer and their associates caught with the country’s looted funds. President Buhari ought to realise that looters of public fund are mass murderers.

    For instance, money that could have been used to arm the military to crush terrorism, repair damaged roads and fund the country’s ailing health sector have been embezzled by miscreants in power. Consequently, thousands of lives have been lost to terrorist attacks, ghastly accidents on bad roads, poor health facilities.

    The deaths of these hapless souls brutally hacked down in their prime by terrorists, bad roads and health sector, are blamable on the men and women that conspired to divert fund initially earmarked to resolve these problems.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria is still afflicted by political profiteers comprising the ruling class and various segments of the poor, struggling masses. In the ensuing degeneracy of politics and cultural ethos, the hero we know today may morph into a dreadful monster. Given that power is the brandy of the turncoat, there is need to persistently scrutinize President Buhari uncompromisingly.

    For instance, his touted anti-corruption fight remains noise-making at the moment. When the ‘corrupt’ get prosecuted and sent to jail for their misdemeanor, Nigerians will believe him. And despite his touted reduction of his salary and that of his deputy, President Buhari is not working pro bono. He is being paid for the work he does. And it’s an open secret that his cozy allowances among other frills of being President and living in Aso Rock are the stuff the finest fantasies are made of.

    Buhari has been cuddled enough, by the media and his most ardent supporters. Nigeria needs him to work now. And no matter the floweriness and duplicity of spin accorded his performance so far, very little has changed since he became President. It is sad to note that the steadier electricity supply oft cited by his diehard apologists as a dividend of his leadership has since petered out. Electricity supply has become worse and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), under the numb chairmanship of Dr. Sam Amadi is determined to inflict greater hardship on Nigerians by increasing electricity tariff.

    And even though he vowed to crush Boko Haram by December 2015, it is clear that President Buhari didn’t achieve any such feat hence he should learn to be more tactful and modest in making future pledges. The military’s recent fiasco with the Shiite Muslim sect elicits greater apprehension among the citizenry – many are worried that President Buhari and his re-invigorated military might have sown the seeds of another bloody, villainous insurgent group masquerading as Muslims.

    Buhari is yet to do anything extraordinary; the ‘steadier’ electricity supply has dropped to an abysmal low and his cabinet’s ineptitude resonates jarringly among the citizenry.

    While we acknowledge that his touted honesty and integrity exerts reasonable pressure on corrupt individuals and institutions to do a cartwheel away from corruption, it need be reiterated that his anti-corruption stance and ‘government with a human face’ propaganda will continually resonate as a desperate, corny lie, until the judiciary begins to sentence looters of public fund to severe jail terms.

    And contrary to claims that he has a great team to work with, he doesn’t. He has characters that have been embroiled in scandalous cases of corruption and administrative ineptitude in the past. Nigerians accepted him (Buhari) and his team not because they are the best that we could ever produce but because they represent that excusable part of our cancerous bulk that could pass our body.

    The citizenry see the ruling class as a primitive tribe of predators grossly inured in corruption. On the other hand, some love to see Buhari as our saviour. Contemporary boondocks legend paint a portrait of him as a warrior in wolf-skin vest, brandishing a shield of steeled morality and a stone-axe forged to hack down monuments that the corrupt ruling class built to entrench corruption.

    There is no gainsaying his emergence as President via the March 28 elections was a welcome development. But has Buhari justified the mandate given him so far? Besides his bid to recoup looted funds from corrupt officers of the last administration, how does he fare as an administrator?

    Buhari’s touted morality is ennobled by widespread admiration and cult worship of him. The danger in the cult worship he currently enjoys however, is that we are setting him up for failure. Certain sections of the press may go easy on him because one or two members of the nation’s fourth estate are in his employ as media aides but the truth need be told to President Buhari from time to time; he is not doing too well at the moment. His performance is below par.

  • In defence of Magu

    In defence of Magu

    The ongoing battle of wits between EFCC’s Ibrahim Magu and NBA’s Abubakar Mahmoud over which of their two organizations Nigerians should trust became more intense with the former’s unrestrained sweeping reference to a “Bar populated or directed by people perceived to be rogues and vultures (that) cannot play the role of priests in the temple of justice”.  I don’t think Mahmoud should lose sleep over such sweeping generalization.   ‘Rogues and vultures’ we now know, are not the exclusive preserve of the bar. The ongoing sordid revelations from ‘Dasuki-gate’ have shown they have infiltrated all Nigerian institutions including the Press and the church that once served our people as model for moral rectitude.  What I think should worry the bar however is that the judiciary, unlike other institutions of state and more specifically, the press that has contributed immensely to the emancipation of our nation and consolidation of the democratic process, has remained the greatest threat to our survival as a nation. This, many have come to associate with greed among some senior members of the bar.

    History tells us that this small but powerful members were behind the 1962 bizarre judgment  against Action Group in the West, which  inexorably led to the collapse of the First Republic; exploited Ironsi inadequacies to foist Unitary Decree 34 of 1967 on the nation which eventually led to a civil war and aided Babangida with the interim contraption decree to deny the winner of a national election the joy of victory which although did not lead to a contrived civil war, but nonetheless resulted in a five-year savage reign of Abacha. We have also seen this past 16 years, a judiciary, that chose to shield those who confiscated our commonwealth without paying attention to the pursuit of justice without which a nation decays.  And until the passage in  2015 of the  Administration of Criminal Justice Act, we watched in dismay as  those facing  criminals cases of fraud, murder, and drugs  transited  from state government houses to the Upper house as senators with the help of powerful few that secured ‘perpetual injunctions’ from intimidated high courts judges. Ex-President Jonathan reduced this national tragedy to a comedy in 2014. Asked why those indicted by house probe for the theft of N1.6trillion,  many of whom had by then  become his campaign managers and fund raisers, were shielded from prosecution, he said he should not be held responsible for the slow pace at which the wheel of justice grinds in our country.   President Buhari has since identified the same powerful group as a threat to the ongoing war against corruption.

    In spite of this history of betrayals and of baleful legacies, Mahmoud during his inauguration as the newly elected NBA President on August 26 told Nigerians that “The Nigerian Bar Association commits itself to the fight against corruption in Nigeria. We will put our knowledge, our skills and all resources to combat corruption and reclaim the dignity of Nigerians and of our country”, he promised.   However, to guarantee the success of the bar’s planned new offensive against corruption, he canvassed for the withdrawal of the prosecutorial powers of the EFCC the only anti-corruption agency that has in recent times secured the conviction of some otherwise untouchables in society. He wanted the function transferred to another body that will not be reporting to the executive. He however  did not advance any argument to invalidate the unassailable reasons  the model builders of ‘the doctrine of separation of powers’ deployed to  justify assigning the control of such agencies to the executive, the custodian of state coercive power with corresponding responsibility of taming man’s animal instinct in order to guarantee peace in society.

    With the above unresolved fundamental question, Magu says those behind the attempt to deny EFCC the power to prosecute are ‘perfectly in sync with a cleverly disguised campaign by powerful forces that are uncomfortable with the reinvigorated anti-graft campaign of the EFCC and are hell-bent on emasculating the agency by stripping it of powers to prosecute with the tame excuse that an agency that investigates cannot also prosecute’. He believes there must be other motives since EFCC is only one of many government agencies that investigate and prosecute.

     Beyond this, he also wants Mahmoud to tell Nigerians why they should have faith in his prosecutorial superiority when he as the federal government appointed prosecuting counsel in the trial of ex-Delta State governor, James Ibori, at the Federal High Court, Asaba, bungled the case which EFCC lost in questionable circumstances while the same ingredients from that case were used to fetch Ibori a 13-year jail term in London.  Magu also informed Nigerians that the new NBA president “was also the commission’s counsel in the appeal against the infamous perpetual injunction from arrest and prosecution by former Rivers State Governor, Peter Odili, which is still pending before the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt’, eight years after it was filed.

    Some think Magu is hitting below the belt. I don’t think so. Except in Nigeria, record of public service count for much for those who aspire for leadership at any level in democratic societies. Voluntary service to the disadvantaged and vulnerable in local communities and promotion of ideals that impact positively on society are in fact necessary requirements for leadership. President Clinton and Obama started their presidential journey by providing voluntary public service as young lawyers. Hillary Clinton, currently running for American Presidency, her husband claimed rejected his marriage proposal twice because of her commitment to the disadvantaged groups. And because of her devotion to the vulnerable in Arkansas where he was governor, President Clinton claimed his party leaders used to joke about whether a wrong Clinton had not been elected as governor.

    But Abubakar Mahmoud does not need a record of service and commitment to the well-being of vulnerable to emerge NBA President. This is probably why he thinks that his dismal record of performance as a government prosecutor like those of his other privileged colleagues who cornered the brief for the prosecution and defence of the over 200 fraudulent bankers responsible for the collapse of the banking sector out of which only four were brought to justice in a period spanning eight years does not preclude him and his colleagues from taking over prosecutorial power of EFCC.

    But Magu thinks otherwise. With such depressing record of performance, he wants NBA’s   Mahmoud to explain to Nigerians why he and his group  should take over prosecutorial powers of EFCC, the only agency that has in contrast secured a number of high profile judgments against some otherwise ‘untouchables’.

    When one considers the assertion of Chief Kehinde Sofola, a past president of the bar, that the primary responsibility of the bar is to the bar, it becomes difficult to disagree with Magu that “It is too much of a strange coincidence that the suggestion to strip the EFCC of its prosecutorial powers is being floated a few months after the commission, in unprecedented fashion, arraigned some senior lawyers for corruption”.

  • Political stability in Africa and Middle East

    Recently, Donald Trump said he admires Saddam Husain, the late president of Iraq who was judicially lynched by the successor Shiite government of Iraq during the American occupation of the country. People were aghast at his comment. He also said he sees no reason for America to be an eternal enemy of Russia and that even if the USA does not like Russia it should cooperate with Russia to defeat ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and that the USA fought along with the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin during the Second World War to defeat the axis powers of Japan and Germany. One may disagree violently with Trump on almost everything but in the instances cited, I can see some sense in his usual madness.  I am convinced that the likes of Saddam Husain maintained some kind of peace in the Middle East in spite of the brutality of his regime. Even though he came from the minority Sunni population and treated all opposition Shiite or Sunni with brutality, he ensured that there was peace which was what the generally apolitical ordinary people of Iraq wanted. The mistake people in the West made was wanting to graft democracy on a traditionally autocratic conservative Arab environment.

    When people in the West were hailing the so-called Arab Spring, I had the sneaky feeling that things will not turn out well. This was when I listened to the ambassador of Syria to the UN sometimes in 2010 at the plenary of the UN General Assembly pleading for understanding of his country’s problem. He had argued that Syria was a delicately balanced country of Alawites, (Shiite) Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Armenians and Aramaics and that backing Sunnis who want to overthrow the Bashar-al-Asad regime would bring all sorts of external forces and complications which will not augur well for the future of Syria and the Middle East. After more than a decade of warfare and a whole country with an old civilization destroyed, there has neither been democracy nor peace in Syria rather a murderous group calling itself a caliphate has emerged bridging the frontiers of Iraq and Syria and imposing its draconian rule and will on a helpless and hapless people leading to the largest migration of a destabilizing horde of people since the end of the Second World War. But for the tenacity of the Sharifian dynasty in Morocco and the FLN government led by the old and infirm Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria who were able to resist the forces of the dissidents particularly FIS (Front Islamique de Salut) the so-called Arab Spring would have engulfed the whole of the Maghreb. The situation in Libya was unfortunately not the same for several reasons. NATO wanted Muamar al Ghadafi to be removed from power because of what was considered as his dangerous ambitions in the past especially wanting to develop nuclear and chemical weapons on the other side of the Mediterranean which Europe considers a European lake. Even though he had given up the ambition, he was never trusted. So when the occasion for his removal presented itself, NATO was not going to allow it to slip from its hand. Their forces instigated a local rebellion which it joined to murder without trial an incumbent head of State. But what has replaced the years of stability in Libya is chaos and the takeover of part of the country by forces pledging allegiance to the Caliphate. The situation in Libya is like the case of Humpty Dumpty and everybody is waiting for which forces will secure the vast country of Libya. Whatever anybody may say about Ghadafi, he secured the country for decades after the overthrow of King Idris al-Sannusi. Egypt is back in the hands of the military after the initial hoopla of getting rid of President Mubarak. He was replaced by Mohammad Morsi for about a year before he was overthrown by General Muhammad -al-Sisi. It appears that the Egyptians would rather have stability than some wooly democracy or chaotic rule by the Islamic Brotherhood of Morsi. The effendiyyah in Egypt is just too sophisticated for that. It is only in Tunisia where the Arab Spring has brought in some form of constitutional regime albeit under an 82 year old president! Yemen is in turmoil and the Saudi army is there fighting a proxy war with Iran that is backing the Houthis who are Shiites. Oman and the other Gulf States including Saudi Arabia are maintaining some precarious peace with their Shiite subjects cowed down by overwhelming Sunni forces. Iran continues to pose existential challenge to the gulf Arab states and even far afield to Sunni domination or threatened domination in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Egypt which could have provided Sunni counterweight to Iran is held down by a collapsed economy and terrorist challenge in the Sinai. The chaos in North Africa and he Middle East has reverberation in Africa where the Al Qaida in the Maghreb and West Africa, Boko haram in Nigeria, Niger and the Cameroon and al Shabbab in Somalia and Kenya constitute variants of the same Middle East Islamic terrorism. The direct effect of this is the proliferation of weapons of precision that are fueling insurgency all over Africa.

    One common denominator to the Middle East and Africa is their sit-tight presidents in Museveni’s Uganda, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Bashar’s Sudan, Paul Kagame’s Rwanda and other dictators in the inter-lacustrine state of Burundi as well as virtually all the Francophone states of the two Congos, Central African Republic and the Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea. Even the new state of Southern Sudan is torn by ethnic war because of the sit tight syndrome. While this goes on, there is neither growth nor development of the economy. On top of this is the rising population of young people who have no hope of employment. Even countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Tanzania to mention a few are also afflicted by unimpressive economic performance and joblessness of their ballooning youthful population. This a time bomb in both Africa and the Middle East. The situation is so bad that young people are ready to die crossing to Europe by leaky dinghies and boats across the Mediterranean Sea.

    What is to be done? It seems to me that Africa has largely accepted that the democratic way is the way forward. There may be debate about what style of democracy. It is obvious that the western model may have to be modified to suit the peculiar condition of each African state.  This is not the same as supporting any bastardized democratic contraption called home-grown democracy which is a euphemism for dictatorship. The market driven economic prescriptions of the West may not work because of paucity of foreign and local investors. The state would have to intervene through direct investment by state corporations side by side with private investors like it happened in South Korea. The enforced orthodoxy of market economy will have to give way to practical solution that would also generate employment for the teeming masses of the people.

    But as for the Middle East and North Africa, democracy may not work there for long time to come. The Middle East will only survive if a way is found to satisfy its young people who are suffering from unemployment. This problem would worsen with the decline in the price of gas and oil which will make it impossible for the gulf countries to continue to bribe young people with generous perks because sooner or later they will run out of cash. The future of the almost 350million Arabs is uncertain unless realistic solution is found to the economic and political conditions of those countries There will also have to be a reconciliation between Iran and the Arab states as well as between Sunni and Shiite sectarian traditions in Islam. Finally the question of war and peace with Israel must be resolved by accepting the existence of two states, Israel and Palestine, in old Palestine. Inability to solve this problem may drive Arab youth to extremist tendencies which would not augur well for peace in the Middle East an absence of which could pose a threat to global peace.

  • This Nigerian dream…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Police and new Lagos traffic laws

    Governor Ambode has in a little over a year  justified the confidence reposed on him by Lagosians who during the last election, chose him over  JimiAgbaje, currently engaged in a public brawl with Bode George, his ‘father’ over PDP chairmanship. I believe he has also so far proved he is a worthy successor to his trail-blazing predecessors. Ambode remains a silent operator allowing his creativity and resourcefulness to shine through the quality of governance. Determined to outstrip the giant strides of his predecessors, his Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)projected target for 2017 is N30billion, a great leap from the paltry N600m Bola Tinubu inherited in 1999 and even the humongous N17b he inherited from Fashola, his immediate predecessor. The Nation’s Sam Omatseye describes him as ‘Nigeria’s alpha governor’ whose Lagos ‘is the only vibrant state in the federation’.

    Ambode understands insecurity is the greatest threat to a mega city. His administration therefore went ahead in February to inaugurate a new traffic laws and relevant punishments in an effort to build on the security architecture he inherited.  Speaking on behalf of the governor during its inauguration, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Atilade, the Chief Judge of Lagos State was specific on the targets of the government new crusade. “Those who choose to make life difficult for other people, especially on our roads; those who engage in flagrant disregard or violation of traffic rules with impunity; break traffic rules at will and cause needless traffic snag, drive against traffic and beat the traffic lights, destroy traffic furniture and infrastructure, drive across the road median and through their lawlessness and irresponsible actions, daily inflict pains, grieve and sorrow on fellow citizens.” These “few recalcitrant and obstinate drivers and road users who impede businesses, maim innocent people or send people to their early graves”, the administration swore to battle on behalf of Lagosians.

    Some of the new 11 laws and their attendant punishment include ‘One-Way’ driving which attract a penalty of three years; abandoning vehicle on highway which attracts a fine of N50,000 or three years imprisonment, or both; Motorcycle riding against traffic, smoking while driving, disobeying traffic control, riding motor cycle without crash helmet etc. each of which attracts a fine of N20,000. Many believe the fines are harsh and the intended objectives – whether deterrence or to raise revenues for the state – are nebulous and unattainable. But most Lagosians trust Ambode and therefore have no quarrel with government over the new crusadeto free the people from the menace of ill-bred motorists. It was in this spirit I had sarcastically advised a neighbour who complained two weeks back that his daughter was fleeced of N6,000 for driving with expired vehicle licence by some policemen in Ikeja, an offence outside the new traffic laws, that he and his daughter must learn to be good citizens by having their vehicle papers renewed as at when due.

    Little did I realize the joke was on me until I became a victim last Friday. I was flagged down by one Inspector who by her name tag is probably from Edo North at about 2.30 p.m, a few metres from Ikeja LGA secretariat. I enthusiastically handed over all my vehicle particulars even though she had demanded only for my drivers’ license believing everything was up to date. Moments later she said she was impounding my vehicle because my vehicle license expired few days earlier. Before I realized she was not joking, a police sergeant who by his name tag is of Benin extraction was inside my car ordering me to drive to their station next to Ikeja LGA office.

    At the station, I met about a dozen others engaged in an on-going negotiation anchored by a fair complexioned police woman. My offence, which is driving with expired vehicle licence, I was told, attracts a fine of N20,000 at the Alausa mobile court. Being a Friday, if I failed to come back by 4pm, my car would be impounded until Monday with a possibility of it attracting a demurrage fine of N10,000. I could save myself all the trouble with an option of paying a police fine of N5.000. I craved their indulgence to collect the amount from a nearby ATM machine. They obliged.

    With the illegal police fine collected in the presence of everyone by the sergeant, my impounded car was released. In less than 10 minutes and armed with my renewed vehicle licence obtained from the LGA office next to the police station, I returned and insisted on reporting the extortion to the DPO. As expected, I was told I could only seethe officer incharge of traffic offences.  After patiently listening to my tales, he said neither he nor the DPO sent anyone to collect money on their behalf. He admitted however that there are rotten eggs in the lower cadre of the police but quickly added they were laid by the matured chickens currently in charge of affairs of the police. He then wanted to know if my mission was to retrieve my N5,000.But remembering the great Zik’s admonition that it is only a mad man who argues with an armed Nigerian police, I told him my mission was to find out from the DPO what is being done to stop the extortion of Nigerians which was going on with impunity under his nose.

    Aswe stood talking beside one of the new vehicles procured by Lagos State with public fund to wage the new crusade, harmless members of the public were streaming in and out of the office where bargaining and haggling take place before extortion. In the little over 30 minutes I spent in Ikeja Police station, I did not see a single “danfo” bus driver, the notorious traffic offender among those arrested for traffic offences. Of course none of the accosted traffic offenders needed to go to Alausa to pay fine. Not even a woman who was tongue-lashed and dismissed as ‘ the archetypal troublesome Benin woman who always wants to prove she knows the law more than the police’, for insisting that the FRSC and VIOare the two bodies empowered by law to arrest those who drive with expired vehicle licences and not the police, was sent to Alausa. The woman later confessed she parted with N6,000 for her own double-barreled offence- driving with expired drivers’ licence and expired motor vehicle licence.

    The Ikeja encounter I have since learnt is what goes on in police stations across Lagos. To prevent the Nigeria Police, which as structured can be loyal to neither the nation-state nor its constituent units, drawing a wedge between him and the Lagos citizens, Ambode must excuse the police from the handling of traffic offences while he embarks on massive investment in LASTMA.  First, traffic is a local affair all over the world except in Nigeria where the federal government, blinded by a desire to control all aspects of our life forgets that the answer to some of our current challenges such as gathering intelligence about members of avengers, checking the menace of the so-called Fulani herdsmen or cattle rustlers and consolidating the gains we have made in the liberated north-east is local policing.

    By the time the federal government wakes up from its slumber and realizes that restructuring the bungling and ineffective Nigerian police is inevitable, Ambode’s investments on LASTMA would have started to yield dividends for Lagos State.

  • The police chief’s dilemma

    The police chief’s dilemma

    DO Nigerians still hold the contentious title of the world’s happiest people?

    I am not sure now, just as I wasn’t a few years ago when some researchers, apparently aware of our rare passion for vacuous recognitions, garlanded us with that disputable honour. It is, however, sure that we are a fastidious lot. We are hard to please as we find fault in any venture, no matter the nobility of its intentions and the dexterity of its delivery.

    If you doubt this assertion, ask police chief Ibrahim Kpotun Idris. Shortly after he was named the acting Inspector- General in June, Idris moved fast to consolidate his grip on the seat.

    Not a man of great eloquence, the police chief is no doubt a man of action. In his first major press conference, the former traffic officer accused his predecessor, Solomon Arase, of going away with a fleet of 24 vehicles, among them two exotic BMW 7 Series, one of which is   bullet proof. Idris lamented that he was left with an old car.

    Arase defended his integrity, saying he never went away with 24 cars as alleged by his successor. “What am I going to do with 24 cars? Do I want to open a car shop?” Arase asked angrily. He described the allegation as malicious and advised his successor to face the security situation in the land “rather than engage in media propaganda”.

    Poor Idris. He cut a pitiful picture of a guard hurled on harm’s way after his arms had been stolen while he was asleep. Not one to be easily deterred from pursuing any cause he considers noble and elevating, he refused to allow such a matter of national importance go away like a village market row between two overfed women. He raised a Special Investigation Panel (SIP) to probe the number of cars the police had bought in the last three years and who got them.

    So bad was the situation that Idris took his plight to the court of public opinion. He said: “The last time I followed the President with it he was asking me, ‘what are you doing with this old car’ because if you see the headlight, the thing has changed colour, which means they parked it and rains and everything had fallen on it, but the new ones that were bought, he (Arase) went with all of them; they are part of the 24.”

    Unknown to the IG, he had stirred up a hornet’s nest. Instead of sympathising with him and displaying the deep empathy such a grave situation deserves, those inconsiderate and implacable fellows who will never see anything good in any public official descended on him. What does he need a big car for? Does he need a BMW to pursue criminals? Should that be his first headache? What will he do if Arase decides not to surrender the cars? Was he appointed to ride cars?

    They were unsparing and scurrilous in their upbraiding of the police chief. It was as if he had committed murder, one of those despicable crimes he was hired to fight. Trust Idris, who had spent 17 years in the elite Mobile Force, the one referred to dreadfully as “Kill and go” on account of its extrajudicial actions. He took it all on the chin.

    But then he had become a marked police chief. Every step he took became a subject of unbridled attacks by those fellows, the armchair critics who hide under various shadowy nomenclatures, such as public affairs analyst, public commentator, security expert and other funny titles.

    Apparently reacting to the outcry over extrajudicial killings, Idris threatened to order psychiatric tests for his men. The rumour mongers, who never weighed the merit of the Acting IG’s logic – that no sane policeman will fire at innocent citizens – descended on him.

    They screamed: Is that the problem? When will this man get serious and know that policing is serious business and not a plate of salad washed down with a bottle of French wine? Will he lead the way? Shouldn’t such tests have been administered at the point of entry? Who will pay for the tests?

    Even some of those to be tested were said to have been deriding the idea, whispering: na test we go chop?

    Obviously mindful of being seen as impassive to reason, Idris is yet to carry out his threat – despite the risk of being scorned by an ever fickle public as a weak police chief who lacks the courage to implement his plans.

    Not done with hurling invectives at the IG, those unrepentant traducers of all patriotic public servants started to blame him for the negligible few policemen who guard civilians, especially our prized politicians and businessmen who, according to the critics, have turned the officers to errand boys. They claim that policemen still carry handbags for the wives and concubines of the rich and powerful. Is that true? Even if it is, how many do?

    Besides, they insist, as usual without  any iron-clad proof, that checkpoints remain with us despite the fact that they had been banned a long time ago. Haba. Let us be fair. Did Idris order the return of checkpoints? Why should he carry the can for that? Can any police chief be so ubiquitous as to see everything going on the land?

    Of all the allegations against the police chief, none has been as vociferous as those concerning the fellow who named his dog Buhari. The story is a familiar one. A trader, Joachim Iroko (no relation of the one who governs Ondo) Chinakwe, 40, named his dog Buhari, inscribed the name on the animal and walked it in an area with a large concentration of people of an ethnic group. The police grabbed him and threw him into detention.

    He had barely spent three days when a huge outcry broke out from the human rights community and ordinary Nigerians whose business is to mind other people’s business. The police would not be distracted  by the hullaballoo. They did a thorough investigation of this all-important and delicate case.

    They charged Citizen  Chinakwe with conduct likely to cause a breach of peace. For ease of reference, the charge: “That you, Joachim Iroko, aka Joe, and others still at large,on Saturday August 13, 2016, at about 5.30pm at the Ketere area, Sango in the Ota Magisterial District did conduct yourselves in a manner likely to cause breach of the peace, by writing a name, Buhari, on a dog and parading same in the Hausa section of Ketere Market, Sango, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 249 (d) of the Criminal Law of Ogun State, Nigeria, 2016.”

    Chief Magistrate B.J. Ojikutu admitted Chinakwe to bail in the sum of N50,000, which took his humble family a tortuous while to raise.

    Instead of praising the unusually speedy investigation of this seditious matter, the so-called critics jumped onto the train of the huge group of emergency animal rights activists that had sprouted like wild mushrooms in the wake of the matter. They lashed onto it to pound our Acting IG and his men. Besides, they tried to surreptitiously drag President Muhammadu Buhari into the fray by claiming that his was the Buhari inscribed on Chinakwe’s dog. Whatever happened to the respect we accord our leaders and their offices.

    Where are Chinakwe’s accomplices? Isn’t naming a pet an inalienable right of its owner? Are there limits to where a dog or any pet can be paraded? Where is the dog, the star exhibit in this case?

    Another police chief would have ordered Chinakwe flown to Abuja, hustled on by an army of  armed guards to prevent his accomplices – they are still at large, you know – from storming the airport to free him. In Abuja, he would have been bundled before a judge of controversial standing who would have banged his head with impossible bail terms, including a surety who must be a director at the Presidency and who must own property in Asokoro. The court, needless to say, would have sat under the tightest security our police chiefs could muster– mounted guards, Bomb Disposal Unit, Marine Police, Dog  Unit and all.

    Not Idris’ humane police. Chinakwe was simply brought before a discretionary  magistrate who gave him bail on liberal terms. The treasonable tension and canine conducts generated by the big dog issue died almost immediately. But, no thanks to the much discredited analysts, the police have got no kudos.

    Why are our people so difficult to please?

  • The tragedy in Turkey

    Turkey is the example of a largely Islamic country that has successfully reconciled democratic modernism with its Islamic tradition.This fact goes back to the deliberate action of Mustapha Kemal, the Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey on the ashes of the collapse of Ottoman Turkey after the First World War. General Kemal had come to the conclusion that the degenerate Ottoman Porte with its lavish palaces filled with wives and concubines from European subjects of Turkey had weakened the empire and that a non-hereditary regime fashioned after the victorious Allies that had seen the defeat of turkey was the way forward.He therefore designed a constitution that was to guide the Turkey of his dream and he made the Turkish military the guardian of the Turkish democratic secular constitution.He banned any external symbolism of Islam such as the kaftan and the hijab characteristic of Muslim men and women before his revolution. He wanted Turks to dress like Europeans and distance themselves from the Middle Easterners who were their subjects before the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire by the Versailles peace treaty of 1919.He wanted Turkey to emphasize its European geography even though the larger part of its territory is in Asia. This is why he bridged the straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles with a feat of engineering to link the two parts of Turkey.This tradition had prevailed in Turkey since then and the military had jealously guaranteed the kemalist heritage and political order of separation of mosque and state until RecepTayyip Erdogan became Prime Minister and now president of Turkey. Erdogan decided to cut the military to its size and to remove the institution from most of its privileges as guardian of the secular state of Turkey. He decided to showcase the Islamic tradition of Turkey without apologies to anybody. He apparently sees himself as some kind of a reincarnation of the last Ottoman Sultan. He is determined to concentrate all powers into his own hand. He has been largely successful because until recently he has built a strong economy in Turkey and embarked on large-scale reconstruction works that has modernized the infrastructure of the country. With the help of its NATO allies, he has built a formidable military second to none in its area. Turkey has the largest army among its European NATO allies and its proximity to Russia makes it of vital importance to NATO and the United States. Erdogan had also hoped the European Union would accept Turkey as a member and the country’s application for membership has been pending for a long time. This is because some members are not too comfortable admitting Turkey a country of 80 million Muslims into a largely nominally Christian European Union. Some members also feel that Turkish democracy is superficial and not ingrained. The Turks have also not been able to resolve the ethnic problem tearing Turkey apart by pitching the forces of Turkish nationalism against that of the Kurds who form substantial portion of the Population of Turkey. The Kurds are an ancient people who are largely Sunni Muslims divided among Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran with the ones in Turkey being the largest segment.Refusal of Turkey to grant them a large measure of autonomy has led to a guerrilla war for decades and urban terrorism for longer before the current campaign of the ISIL (Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant). To compound the problem of Turkey, the wars in Iraq and Syria has led to substantial gains for Kurdish nationalism in both countries. The Kurds virtually now have their own state in northern Iraq while they are virtually free with their own army in Syria. These events have had considerable impact in Turkey where there is exponential rise of Kurdish nationalism to the chagrin and irritation of Erdogan and his fellow Turkish nationalists. He has had to intensify bombing of Kurdish guerrilla in the Kurdish mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria to the irritation and anger of the United States that has been propping up Iraqi Kurdistan against the forces of the Islamic caliphate and possibly as a counter-weight to the Shiite dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad that is now influenced by Iran. It is a complicated picture and jigsaw political puzzle. Added to the mix is Russia that is fighting on behalf of the Basher’s regime in Syria because of not wanting to lose a strategic naval base in a country that had been an ally of Russia since the Union of Socialist Soviet Russia’s days. Because of American pressure, Erdogan has had to allow American Air Force to use a military air base in Turkey against the caliphate forces in Iraq and lately Syria. Ordinarily Erdogan wanted the fall of the Shiite regime In Syria to the point of being tolerant of the caliphate before he was made to take a stand against them. He had earlier asked Turkish Air Force to shoot down a Russian plane that was menacingly bombing dissident forces near the Syrian-Turkish border.

    This is the political and complicated background of the situation in which Erdogan had to negotiate. His abrasive nature did not prepare him for compromise either with democratic forces or youths manifesting discontent with his rather draconian social programmes or building malls in parks favoured by young people or with the democratic Kurdish demands for autonomy and language rights.On top of this, he had to contend with the military that was increasingly worried by the outward Islamic tendencies of the Erdogan regime far away from the secularist tradition of modern Turkey. Furthermore was the disagreement with one of his previous supporters – the Islamic cleric  Muhammad Fethullah Gulen, founder of a movement called Cemaat with tremendous influence in academia, the civil service and the press as well as the military that tended to hark back to Turkish Islamic roots and tradition and supposedly championing the interests of the ummah in Turkey. Following a break with Erdogan, Gulen had gone into exile in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. But he still had a large following in Turkey.

    When there was an attempted coup d’état in Turkey recently, Gulen was fingered as the spiritual inspirer. The coup itself failed because the Turkish critical mass of students, ordinary people and the political elite including the opposition parties and Kurdish democratic forces rose against it by blocking military vehicles on the roads and challenging soldiers at the expense of their lives. Inability to kill Erdogan proved the undoing of the coup plotters. When the dust of the abortive coup settled, Erdogan struck back firing in one swoop about 100,000 civil servants, academics, teachers, judges, military and police officers and putting pressure on the press where he suspected there were gulenists. He also at one point accused the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) of complicity in the coup simply because America did not accede to his request to extradite Gulen to face trial in Ankara. It is surprising that he had expected America to send Gulen back to what would have been judicial lynching. Because of this, Erdogan has embarked on politics of brinkmanship playing the Russians against his long term friends and NATO member, the United States. He has gone to Moscow in a widely publicized visit to Vladimir Putin just to demonstrate his independence of the United States and its European allies who though supporting Turkey are a little apprehensive of Erdogan’s heavy post-coup high handedness. This has however been misconstrued by Erdogan for lack of sympathy for him personally and secondly for Turkey whom he has thought he personifies.

    There is now some form of a return to reality. In a recent statement by the same Turkish Prime Minister who had said America was behind the abortive coup, he is reported to have recently said the United States and Turkey remain eternal allies thus eating his own words.

    Turkey’s role in its area is just too important to be trifled away through emotional outburst or by playing the game of the enemy of my enemy is my friend as it tried to do with Russia, a foe of the USA. But the fact remains that Russia’s national interests in the Caucasus are directly in conflict with those of Turkey. Turkey is also a stabilizing force in the tender box of the Middle East where it has influence in the Sunni dominated region which is in contention with Shiite Iran and its influence in Iraq, Yemen Syria and among the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Turkey for years has also had some rapport with the Jewish state of Israel in spite of recent break in diplomatic ties which were restored on the eve of the attempted coup which made some to suspect that that may have had some influence on the minds of the coup plotters. It is therefore in the interest of peace in the area for stability to return to Turkey. But this will not come easily because of Turkish domestic problems which are almost unsolvable and added to this is the spreading suicide and terrorist campaigns within Turkey associated with either the so-called caliphate and or Kurdish guerrilla forces. With this in mind, it will be suicidal for the Turkish state to cut itself loose from its NATO security rampart no matter what Erdogan may feel or want. Above all the temperament and ability of Erdogan to compromise with his enemies and to bow out when the ovation is loudest and watch for a peaceful democratic succession may be in the overall and long term interest of Turkey.

  • A dogfight and other stories

    These are not the best of times in our country. Anywhere you turn to it is always the same thing people are talking about. Times are hard and they are terribly so. In the midst of it all there is some comic relief, but many of us still go about wearing long faces. It seems we have lost our sense of humour because of the prevailing economic hardship. We take what we should laugh over as something serious and we are ready to break bones over it. The other day in Sango,  Ogun State, two neighbours nearly tore themselves apart over the name of a dog.

    The dog owner, Joe Chinakwe, named his pet Buhari. Now, do not ask me why he did that? It is just like asking me why some one named his dog Clinton or Obama. Owners are free to give whatever names they like to their pets. And in most cases, they prefer names that are popular, which people can easily relate with. What is the use of naming your dog Lawal? That name will not turn heads when you walk your dog on the street and shout out its name to the hearing of all. But say Buhari and you will attract attention.

    Perhaps, this was why Chinakwe named his dog Buhari. Coincidentally, our president bears Muhammadu Buhari. Some mischievous guys may want to say that Chinakwe is up to some mischief by giving his dog the president’s name. They should not be that fast in arriving at such conclusion because the president is not the only one bearing that name though he may be the most popular Buhari in the land. A case study is Chinakwe’s neighbour who felt offended that a dog was named after his father, Alhaji Buhari. The neighbour reported to the police that Chinakwe not only named his dog Buhari but also inscribed the name on both sides of the dog’s body.

    You know our police. They are easily excited by such things. Before you could say IG, they had already taken up the case and invited Chinakwe for questioning. The matter went to court and Chinakwe was granted N50,000 bail. For days, he could not meet his bail condition. He eventually did and was allowed home few days ago. Since then, the police have come under attack for the way they handled the matter. People feel that if the dog had been named after a Lawal, a Mojeed or an Isaac, the police would have turned a blind eye to the case no matter the number of complaints lodged. ‘’Because it is the name of Buhari that is involved what do you expect from them than to be seen acting to protect the name”, they say, suggesting that the police are acting because the president’s name is at the heart of the matter.

    The police too heard the insinuations. On Monday, the Zone 2 Command comprising Lagos and Ogun states explained why Chinakwe was arraigned in court. According to the zone’s spokesman, Muyiwa Adejobi, a Superintendent of Police, his arraignment has no connection with the fact that the president bears Buhari. For all the public cares, he may say that to the marines. Chinakwe, he said, was not arraigned for naming his dog Buhari, but for inscribing the name on both sides of the dog’s body and parading it around Ketere area in Sango Ota. Chinakwe’s action, he said, was capable of causing a breach of peace. What if he had inscribed Lawal or Sule on both sides of the dog’s body and paraded it in public would the police have raised an eyebrow?

    Well, the police may have been doing their duty. Why do little things set us on edge these days? Is it because of the hard times? Emeritus Archbishop of Lagos Cardinal Anthony Okogie may have captured why we find it difficult to laugh at ourselves anymore in an open letter to the president. The serious issues he raised showed that the hard times have overwhelmed many. ‘’Today, cries of hunger can be heard across the length and breadth of our vast country…this letter is to appeal to you to do something fast, and, if you are already doing something, to redouble your effort. May it not be written on the pages of history that Nigerians die of starvation under your watch’’, he said.

    Cardinal Okogie might have been in the spirit when he wrote the letter. Few days after his open letter, an unidentified man jumped into the river under the Mile 2 Bridge in Amuwo Odofin, Lagos,  in an apparent bid to commit suicide. The man was said to have stood on the bridge for minutes brooding over his suffering and how things had gone bad for him. There and then, he decided to end it all. A passenger boat was said to have stopped and rescued him. The rescuers left him on the bank of the river where officials of Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS) met him and gave him first aid. A witness said the man said he was tired of life and wanted to kill himself.

    Many Nigerians are dying in silence because they cannot make ends meet. They have become walking corpse. This is why it is advisable that you go on your way these days and avoid altercation with anybody on the road because many out there are just looking for somebody to kill them. Yet in the midst of this distress, criminals are still on the loose. They struck again in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, on Monday, killing an activist lawyer, Ken Atsuete. He was killed when he went to pick his tenant who had been mistakenly kidnapped for him. The police have ruled out assassination, saying he was killed by kidnappers. I will not say the police are jumping into conclusion, but they should investigate first before arriving at their conclusion. What gives them the impression that it is a case of kidnapping and not assassination when they have yet to conclude investigation? They are the experts, so they know best.

    Some men of God will not always act godly and be role model to the rest of us. In Enugu, a pastor was reported to have married a mother and her daughter. The woman, Mrs Calista Omeye, told an Enugu North Magistrates’ Court that she and her daughter married Pastor Timothy Ngwu with her husband’s consent. Her husband, Fidelis, she said persuaded her to meet the pastor because he wanted her to do the will of God through the cleric. So, the pastor ended up doing the will of God through her and her daughter! Reminds one of the kind of things that went on in Jesu Oyingbo’s enclave in the 70s and 80s in Lagos. Who knows, if the pastor’s wife, Veronica, had not shouted out in time her husband too might have ended up creating his own harem in Enugu just as the late Jesu Oyingbo did in Lagos those days.

    Want a tip on how to survive these times? Try laughter – it is a good tonic to relieve tension and a sure way to live long.

  • Slavery is the disease

    Today, complaint is often made of what we call the failure of the Nigerian dream. We lament how monstrously, forces of society accomplish and fail to fulfill their work. We lament how the ruling class functions in profligacy and chaos. Nigeria laments the insensibility of the ruling class.  But today, as usual, we fail to look inwards. Perhaps because we fear we would find in you and I, the summary of all other failures and disorganisation. A sort of heart, from which every kind of confusion and horror gravitates in our fatherland.

    Complaint was often made that our problems persist because we refused to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). There is the argument that our problems worsen because President Buhari refuses to implement the recommendations of his predecessor’s shady SNC. Perhaps there is depth and a semblance of truth in such frivolous mindset even as it becomes more glaring that a trillion SNCs will not save Nigeria.

    This is because any consensus or ‘practicable solutions’ proffered at the conference would be the result of self-serving efforts of generations of shady characters comprising ex-convicts, hired assassins, treasury looters, armed robbers, advance fee fraudsters, decadent clerics and bloodthirsty political godfathers to mention a few. What manner of humaneness could result from a gathering of crows?

    That we undermine ourselves and underestimate our self-worth are old stories told. Now that we have failed us, we pursue the comfort of blame and cheap consolations. Nigeria hasn’t failed us. You and I have failed us. We are the thorny thickets shielding our shoots from the sunny spokes of daylight.

    There is a tragedy inherent in our customary lamentation every time our conscience is roused with a damning incident or report. Racist politicians and activists tirelessly suggest that we go our separate ways. They tout secession as the only solution to the country’s league of extraordinary problems.

    Secession is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of ‘reason’ that we need to be wary of and I will continue to say this hoping every prospective muscle – the youth – by which the separatists hope to achieve their dreams of dissolution, would listen and let the secessionists risk their hides and children to actualize their platitudes.

    The biggest misconception about ‘secession,’ ‘insurgence,’ ‘self-determination ‘or whatever the separatists choose to call it, is that it could be peaceful and that the end result would be a conscientious and citizenry-centred dispensation.

    It’s all dirty, greedy politics. The separatists want the youth to fly the flags of their dream nations. They want everybody to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows: “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” They call anyone that’s anti-war and anti-secession: “pacifist,” “traitor” or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage.

    Then they promise the youth a prosperous future and better fate in their dream nation. Astonishingly, youth that ought to know better, buy into their  farce and they begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become.

    This disillusioned youth engages in bootless pursuits at the end of which he accomplishes too little or nothing. He probably accomplishes some individualized goal – satisfaction of a sentiment or material gain – which to him is everything; but for Nigeria, he accomplishes comparatively nothing.

    Eventually, he morphs into the disgruntled man on the street stereotype; who suddenly realises in his twilight, that he had squandered God’s greatest gifts to him: intellect and talent. Then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realises that his miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin – less suitable for social transaction than a contemptible kobo.

    There is fundamental evil in our souls hence the vileness of our norms and culture. What evils should we set out to abolish in our modern society? To this, I bet very many well-meaning people would answer poverty, even though they ought to answer slavery.

    Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of charity, private or public, they would answer unhesitatingly that they stand for the abolition of poverty.

    But poverty is merely a symptom, slavery is the disease. The extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon the extremes of leadership and bondage. We are not enslaved because we are poor; we are poor because we are enslaved.

    Consequently, every attempt to conceive imaginatively, a better ordering of Nigerian society than the destructive, pitiless chaos in which the nation has sunk is by no means modern; it is at least as old as Plato, whose “Republic” set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers and self-styled revolutionaries.

    The secessionists contemplate a new world in the light of an ideal. They claim to feel a great sorrow by the evils that characterise Nigeria, and they claim to be driven by an urgent desire to lead their ethnic groups or race to the realisation of the collective good. It is this desire which has been the primary force moving the pioneers of anarchism and horrid tyrannies – as it moved the creators of ideal commonwealths in the past.

    In contemporary Nigeria, it is incense for suspicious revolutionaries claiming to fight for the interests of Nigeria’s ethnic divides. In this, there is nothing new. What is new and unpardonably offensive is the pretension of such characters to heartfelt sorrow and shared grief in the suffering of the masses.

    This has enabled cynical and anarchist political movements to grow out of the frustrations and hopes of Nigeria’s youth and predominantly impressionable thinkers, whose thought processes and politics are anything but humane. This makes the agitation of the Nigerian separatists worrisome and markedly dangerous to the survival of the youth and the Nigerian nation.

    The process of re-sensitising the youth away from the establishment of chaos and genocide advocated by the secessionists will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the current political order. However, this can only be achieved by the nation’s youth – who are unfortunately enthralled by the platitudes and desperate politics of Nigeria’s ruling class.

    It is no doubt the stock in trade of the latter to refer to violent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, India-Pakistan, Mali and parts of Asia among others, as worthy indicators of Nigeria’s need to follow suit. Whenever they dazzle with such informed commentary, tell them to lead the secession they advocate with their wives, children and closest relatives.

    Many activists, youth leaders and self-acclaimed political heroes today have their wives and children tucked away in secure schools and neighbourhoods abroad even as they goad impoverished, clueless youth back home to untimely doom.

    If it is true that there is appreciable number of Nigerian youth capable of powering revolts for ethnic self-determination, the end of which is dissolution of Nigeria, why can’t the same youth power the social regeneration and reclamation of the Nigerian State from the clutches of the predatory ruling class, ethnic bigots and dissolution activists?

    The current political dispensation and acute racial bigotry must eventually yield to the influences of education and culture, if the youth could aspire to progressive ideals. But such transformation calls for remarkable wisdom and tolerance.