The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Road to July 29, 1966

We have been plagued in the last two weeks with conflicting tales of what happened on and before the coup day, January 16 1966. While some are busy selling untruths, some claim they are refraining from speaking the truth in order not to bring the past to pain. But last week, Dr Tanko Yakassai, who partook of the recent ‘Dasukigate’ slush fund’ to the tune of N63m as a mark of betrayal of our children who deserve to know the truth about our past and those responsible for our prolong nightmare whimsically and weirdly claimed the only crisis in Nigeria in 1966 was an isolated ‘quarrel between the wife of the AG leader, Chief Awolowo and the wife of the man who succeeded him, his deputy, Chief Akintola’ besides what he also described as isolated clashes between the supporters of Awo in Tiv land.

In the run up to independence, our nation was hijacked by the three dominant ethnic groups, their political parties and their political leaders who believed whatever they could not get cannot be good enough for the rest of the country. The rivalry unfortunately was all about protecting advantages of each group and the relevance of their actors. As Trevor Clark Puts it, ‘they did not see the federation as a shared inspiration but a devise to be manipulated their own region’s selfish purposes’.

In the pursuit of this objective each of the three dominant groups, tried to exploit the fears of minority groups located outside their own regions. Awo and his AG succeeded more in this regard among minorities in the north and east because of their party policy which supported self-actualisation quest by minority groups, a policy violently opposed by the north and the east. Awo made inroads in the warring Tiv land and in fact reclaimed large part of Adamawa for Nigeria from Cameroon with massive deployment of AG lawyers. He and his party also made in roads among the Efiks, Ibibio and Anang minority groups in the east that wanted liberation from the domination of their more aggressively industrious Igbo neighbours.

Ahmadu Bello who selflessly served the poor and the rich alike in the north, sent a number of children below ages of 10 to a British school and awarded post graduate scholarships’ obtainable in best schools in the world did not believe Awo and his AG that labelled him a feudal lord could love the north more than the northerners. He saw AG’s forays into his territory as an attempt to humiliate him by encouraging insurrections among those he was trying to rehabilitate who ordinarily were slaves by virtue of having being conquered by his grandfather. He once according to Trevor Clark, wondered aloud as to why the Yoruba who cherish their own tradition and Obaship would try to set up subjects against their legitimate rulers in the north. Awo, Ahmadu Bello resolved must be punished even if it meant denying him the justice he guaranteed among the least of his subjects in the north.

Awo in contrast to Zik and NCNC who up to 1959 advocated for a unitary system, also advocated in his ‘path to Nigeria freedom’, a federal arrangement based on major ethnic groups. Ibo political elite whose people like the Jews need space to move around saw Awo as a threat to Igbo survival. Demonisation of Awo by the Igbo elite therefore began with the succession crisis in Nigeria Youth Movement. The contest for the presidency of the body following the resignation of Dr. K A Abayomi, was between Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw and Samuel Akinsanya an Ijebu man. Awo an Ijebu man supported Ikoli an Ijaw on principle since the constitution of the NYM made provision for the vice president to succeed the president. Zik and the Igbo members of the body supported Akinsanya an Ijebu man. In the election Ikoli won. Then Zik pulled out all Ibo members accusing Awo of tribalism. And because Zik said so, his Igbo followers believed him…

The 1951, election was based on representation and not on partisan organisation. The electoral process was therefore according to Trevor Clark ‘a single chain that united the region with the central house together from the above and therefore believed ‘It was erroneous for NCNC to claim winning the 1951 western region election’. What happened was that Akinloye and his other Ibadan successful candidates got a better deal from Awo and his AG than from Zik who had insisted on becoming premier of the west instead of appointing a Yoruba NCNC member. Awo was labelled a tribalist who prevented Zik from becoming premier of the west by Igbo political elite.

Again In July 1952, members of the central house were to be elected on regional basis among its members. The constitution recognised Lagos as part of West. But Zik who decided to contest in Lagos since he was based in Lagos lost because Dr Olorunnibe his fellow NCNC member refused to step down for him. Again Awo was blamed for Zik’s misfortune and Ozumba Mbadiwe indeed went on move a motion to remove Lagos from the western region. Lastly Awo was also accused of crime against Zik and by extension against the Igbos for failing to stop an AG member of Eastern House from Calabar who initiated a petition that led to Walter Suton commission of Inquiry’s indictment of Zik over the ACB scandal.

The coalition partners seemed to have resolved to cage Awo shortly after independence. The AG intra-party crisis of 1962 provided an opportunity to illegally declare state of emergency in the west, send Awo to detention, reinstate constitutionally removed Akintola to power without election at the end of emergency period and went on to rig the 1965 election in his favour. Following widespread violence and total anarchy in the west, those who declared state of emergence because less than 10 Akintola supporters threw chairs inside the Western House refused to act even after the meeting of University of Ibadan students with the Prime Minister on the 16th of November 1965.

The 1962 and 1963 census crisis had already strained relationship between Ahmadu Bello and Zik who was given a horse by the former while their intrigue and betrayal of the constitution lasted. By June 1965, Ahmadu Bello had replaced Zik with Akintola who also received from him a ceremonial sword when the two met at Pategi during a Niger canoe regatta. By May 1966, with Awo in prison, chaos and anarchy in the west, Zik humiliated and rendered impotent, and the military, the custodian of our constitution infiltrated by politicians, the coalition partners had shot themselves in the leg.

For instance, while Brigadier Ademulegun who supervised the pacification of the Tiv land was Ahmadu Bello and NPC’s choice as a successor to departing head of the military, the preference of Major General Christopher Welby-Everard was Brigadier Babafemi Olatunde Ogundipe. Ironsi of Sierra Leonean father and an Umuahia mother often wrongly regarded as an Igbo man was ‘no more than a fall-back third candidate, as the ‘least well-equipped militarily or intellectually’. But Zik preferred him to the other two more competent Yoruba candidates. He therefore, along with Mbadiwe, Okotie-Eboh Matthew Mbu and Pius Okigbo lobbied for him. Balewa sent Maitama Sule who was flown to Kaduna to persuade the Sardauna and Isa Keita who did not trust the Ibos. Ironsi was promoted in April 1965.

Questions have been asked as to why the coup plotters allowed the escape of Ironsi, their prime target before entering the venue of a party he attended along with other officers who were later killed. Questions have also been raised as to why Nwafor Orizu, contrary to the provision of the constitution failed to swear in the most senior surviving minister with an excuse that he was waiting for directive from holidaying Zik. And finally it was curious a General Officer Commanding, would after suppressing an insurrection insist on power being ceded to him to guarantee the safety of the surviving ministers, his employers.

January 21, 2016
And the winners are…

At the last instalment of this column, I promised that more awards were on the way. So many things would have made that promise a mere promise – armsgate, crashing oil price and the naira’s fate, Lassa and the other fevers as well as insecurity – but “Editorial Notebook” will always be as good as its word.

Some readers have complained that their favourites were left out of the awards. Others have requested that the scope be expanded to include all manner of headings, some of them highly inspiring, others plainly puerile and pedestrian.

The story is told of a flamboyant traditional ruler, who is fond of decking the rich and powerful with titles. Desperate to honour a prominent citizen, he tells his chiefs to suggest a title for the would-be recipient. “Kabiyesi (Your Majesty),” says a chief, “there are no more titles (Oye ti tan)”. The king smiles. “You got it; brilliant; that is the title for our man; Chief Oyetan.”

So, here, dear reader, are the other awards – as promised:

There was no sign that what has now turned out to be one of the most convoluted electoral jigsaws of our time was on the way as the November 21 Kogi State governorship election progressed. The All Progressives Congress (APC) was heading for victory. Suddenly, a natural complication supervened. Abubakar Audu, the APC candidate, died. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the election inconclusive and ordered that a supplementary election be held in some polling stations, even as the result could never have altered the fact that the APC’s lead was unassailable.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – the one that threatened to trouble Nigeria for 60 years before its evil plot was dismantled by an uncommon popular will – said since Audu had died, the trophy was naturally its own. Many legal giants and ardent subscribers to the fine tenets of democracy said Abiodun Faleke, Audu’s running mate, should naturally step into his shoes.

While the debate was on, John Odigie-Oyegun (A fellow asked me the other day: ‘Is this the Oyegun of the NADECO days?’), a chief and chairman of the APC, suddenly muscled his way into the debate and announced a new candidate for the party. Then, a flood of diatribes hit Oyegun. He was harangued like a Lagos pickpocket, tongue lashed for, according to his traducers, lacking in courage and principle, being remote-controlled and a poodle.

A timid chairman, shoved so roughly like a leaf at the mercy of the waves, would have thrown in the towel – in defence of his integrity. Not so Oyegun. He even found time to pontificate about party supremacy and such inanities.

For his courage, Oyegun is Party Chairman of the Year.

Yahaya Bello, who claims to be Faleke’s friend, had left the party in anger after failing to get its ticket. He was said to have worked against the APC during the election, which the party lost in his ward, and was ruminating on his future when he hit the jackpot. Oyegun handed him the ticket for the supplementary election. He jumped for joy and went into the exercise without a running mate – against the Electoral Act. INEC, expectedly, pronounced him winner of the election.

Yahaya is on the way to becoming our first “supplementary governor”, the one who grabbed a ticket long after the election had been won and got pronounced winner. He is, no doubt, the Candidate of the Year.

His feat became the subject of academic postulations and legal permutations in newsrooms, restrooms and staffrooms. Of all the commentators, Hon. Patrick Obahiagbon stood out. He said of Audu’s passing and Yahaya’s victory: “The tragic passing of Prince Abubakar Audu has polarised the nation into political jingoism. Death is a bugaboo and life terminus. May his soul rest in unblemished peace.

“The quagmire and triviality has further obfuscated the scantiness and paraplegic crinkum crankum of our constitution. Our knowledge centura is enveloped in Einstein cubbyhole. The optate of Mr Bello is Godwin’s law and this has adjudicated the social disequilibrium and political phantasmagoria among the indignant of Kogites. It is my emblem pleasure to congratulate the governor-elect. This is saucier to our youths’ agitation for power. I am manically bewildered, overgasted and flabberwhelmed at the causal rejectal dismal of Mr Bello. This should be buried in a Bermuda triangle instantaneously. The modus operandi of the young man is gargantuan and sui-generis.”

Step forward, Hon Obahiagbon, Chief of Staff to the Comrade – Governor of Edo, Adams Oshiomhole. The prize for Informed Commentator of the Year is yours.

Before he was drafted in, former President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan’s campaign was floundering, lacking in strategy and focus. Femi Fani-Kayode (sorry, a slip there; he is now known and addressed as Olukayode in, according to him, recognition of God’s hand in his discharge from money laundering charges) revved the engine and the campaign came alive. President Muhammadu Buhari, the then APC candidate, was said not to have a School Certificate. The military, in an unprecedented foray into partisan politics and its stench, was suborned to declare his documents missing. A fake report on his health was obtained. It was a smear campaign at its most vicious. Goebbels was in town.

Olukayode put the APC on the defensive. Even after it was as clear as crystal that Jonathan had lost the battle, the spokesman went on television to say his man was leading and that any attempt to turn the table would be resisted. Never one to be suppressed, Olukayode, as if stricken by some strange verbal fever, now screams all over the place that he knew nothing of the allegedly diverted $2.1b arms cash.

But, fair is fair. Fani-Kayode (again, my apology; Olukayode) is Spokesman of the Year.

Until recently, it was not really a popular opinion that the Jonathan administration had damaged the economy. There were all manner of scatterbrained programmes that guzzled money like a gaming machine – SURE-P, You Win I win and many others that represented what many called the profligacy of that time. Nigerians grumbled as their stomachs rumbled with hunger. But, the government went into its deep bag of tricks and whipped out another nebulous programme, which it called “rebasing” , and proclaimed our economy the biggest in Africa even as many went to bed hungry and angry. For the power of her imagination and sheer confidence even in the face of cold facts and figures that showed that the economy was in trouble, Dr Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala (some call her wahala (trouble in Yoruba) should have taken the trophy for Minister of the Year. But will that be fair?

When all the other members of the Jonathan cabinet had jumped ship as it was glaring that the election had been lost, only one man stood sentry. He played the last joker, which somehow failed to work. Elder Godsday Orubebe, a black hat perching on his head, grabbed the microphone, screaming and swearing, in a desperate show of defiance to stop the announcement of the presidential election results. The then INEC chief, Attahiru Jega, was unperturbed. The business of the day went on and Orubebe became the subject of beer parlour jokes.

One of such jokes was that no woman would like to marry Jega because “if you shout at him, he won’t just talk”.

Another: “A new word has been added to the political lexicon, Orubebe. The meaning: To attempt to disrupt a peaceful process. Orubebed (past tense). Orubebeing (present continuous tense). Example : An elder is trying to orubebe the parliament’s plan to pass the Electoral Act, which will criminalise threats to a Returning Officer.”

The police never questioned the former Minister of the Niger Delta for what many saw as a criminal offence. For his rare tenacity in the face of defeat, Orubebe is Minister of the Year.

Joseph Mbu (remember him?) was police commissioner in Rivers State in those turbulent days of the Rotimi Amaechi administration. He banned street protests. Those who dared to protest were hit with rubber bullets and tear gas. When eight lawmakers in a 32-man House attempted to impeach the governor, Mbu’s men were there to give them cover. Mbu was later to say gleefully that he tamed the ‘lion of Rivers’. For his notoriety, he was famous – perhaps more than the Inspector-General.

His critics called him a politician in uniform. He insisted that he was a professional doing his job. Mbu offered a big comical relief amid the pains of those troubled days. He is Policeman of the Year.

Raymond Alegho Dokpesi, founder of Africa Independent Television (AIT) / Raypower FM is alleged to have collected N2.1b from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) for unstated reasons. He insists it was for media and publicity. But the authorities are asking: where is the paper on which the contract was signed? But high chief insists that when he brought the proposal to former President Goodluck Jonathan, former Vice President Namadi Sambo (where in the world is he?) was present. Besides, he recently said scornfully that the whole arms cash story was a hoax, which he is eager to prove in court. No doubt, that is the Contract of the Year.

It is perhaps the most expensive item to have come out of any bakery. Despite a N5b input, the stuff remains in the oven. The man behind it all, needless to say, has taken his expertise elsewhere onto a bigger stage. No prize for guessing right – the cassava bread takes the biggest prize in business. It is the Product of the Year.

So long.

January 21, 2016
Akintola: Continuity and change in Nigerian politics – 1

It is 50 years since Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola was brutally cut down by a band of rebellious Nigerian soldiers who participated in a coup d’état that led to a chain of events disrupting a normal democratic trajectory of Nigeria, the consequences that are still with us today. Fifty years in many countries provide a timeframe within which an objective assessment of past events can be viewed. The dust of history presumably would have settled and the emotional trauma would somehow have been healed because time is a healer. Man is the centre of politics because man constitutes a variable factor in social science, it is difficult and problematic formulating general laws in social science unlike in physical and experimental sciences. Therefore, what happened in the past even though it has implication for the present and for the future does not necessarily determine the trajectory of events in the present. History repeats itself and as George Santayana said, when history repeats itself it comes as a tragedy and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is why it is very important to study the past in other for the present not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, people do not learn from the lessons of the past and this is why we keep doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes or result. The study of historical personages or characters provides the historian the opportunity to learn a lot about the past because dominant personalities play fundamentally significant roles in history. It is impossible to study the past of modern Britain without the full knowledge and study of Winston Churchill neither can we understand modern Germany without the study for bad or for ill, the impact of Adolf Hitler. The development of modern historiography in Nigeria is at its infancy but at least now we have a century of the role of important personalities in the history of our country from people like Sir Akintoye Ajasa, the Emir of Kano, Sarkin Mohammadu Abass and Alafin Ladigbolu the first and others. It is in this respect that a careful and analytical study of the life and times of a major historical figure like Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola may elucidate the past and foreshadow the future of our country. There is no doubt that Chief Akintola first as a central minister, leader of opposition in the federal parliament in Lagos, successful mover in 1957 of the motion for independence of Nigeria and lastly premier of Western Nigeria from 1959-1966 was a formidable figure in the politics and evolution of Nigeria. The child is the father of the man and we are products of our environment so hence before a detailed analysis of his role in Nigerian politics, I will like to situate him within the context of his environment and his people respectively Ogbomoso and Yoruba. Politics is about competition of ideas and people, sometimes in the interplay conflict almost seem inevitable in the life and times of politicians. It is when compromises cannot be reached that you sometimes have open rebellion, disagreement and breakup of political parties. Historically in the Yoruba past, wars were a feature of Yoruba politics. Between 1783 and 1884, almost a century, the Yorubas were involved in internecine fratricidal war particularly after the collapse of the old Oyo Empire and Ogbomoso; Chief Akintola’s hometown produced one or two Are-ona-ka-kan-fo as a major war leader in old Oyo. It would therefore be necessary for me to say a few things about Ogbomoso.

Ogbomoso, the town where Chief Akintola was born, and which has a current population of over 500,000, is the fourth largest town in Nigeria. It is located in the drier part of the rain forest belt and is a city in a transitional zone between the rain forest and the savannah. It is, perhaps, the openness of this environment and the shortage of adequate employment opportunities at home because of over-population which, among other factors, made Ogbomoso people wander as itinerant traders throughout West Africa and particularly into Northern Nigeria. This wandering has in turn tended to make them accommodating and adaptable in the various alien places where they have settled.

Ogbomoso people are Oyo-Yoruba and form part of the larger Yoruba nation that spreads from South Western Nigeria westward into the Republics of Benin and Central Togo. The Yoruba are a highly homogenous people in terms of culture, and while they speak a variety of dialects, these are intelligible to most of the Yoruba. The Yoruba number around 40 million in Nigeria and West Africa. The Yoruba form a well-defined society with a common history, shared experience, a distinct and common language, a single and contiguous geographical area and even the belief in common eponymous ancestors, Oduduwa or Olofin.

This is not to say that Yoruba people themselves do not recognise sub-groups or regional traits and characteristics. In fact, throughout most of the 19th century, the Yoruba were engaged in civil wars after the collapse of the old Oyo Empire when new centres of power were established and new political alignments were being made to ensure peace and good governance.

Most members of the Yoruba nation would also acknowledge their membership in sub-groups such as Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Ilorin, Ijebu, Ikale, Ilaje, Ijesha, Awori, Akoko, Owo, Okun, ibolo, Igbomina and some would say Itshekiri. Contact between the Yoruba and other Nigerians, particularly the Edo, Nupe, Borgawa (Ibariba), Hausa-Fulani, Kamberi, the Fon and Aja speaking peoples in Benin Republic (Dahomey) goes back thousands of years at least, it certainly predated the coming of the Portuguese during the fifteenth century. The contact has been of two kinds. In some cases, it was for trade and in others, contact took the form of conquest. In these relations, Yoruba culture has influenced others and has in turn borrowed from others. The mutuality of this contact in the case of the Yoruba, Edo, Igala and Nupe can be seen in their fairly similar political organisations and in the similarity of the material artefacts of their past civilisations.

The British first made an inroad into Nigeria by the invasion and annexation of Lagos in 1851 and 1861 respectively. From that time onwards, they spread their tentacles all over Nigeria through either diplomacy and cunning or outright conquest. By 1914 modern Nigeria came into being after the amalgamation of the separate administrations of Northern and Southern Nigeria. The country was put under an autocratic governor, Sir Frederick Lugard, who succeeded in isolating one Nigerian group from the other and maintained the political status quo then prevailing as much as possible. Through this administrative unification, the state of Nigeria was preserved for the British, who used Nigerian men and resources in prosecuting two World Wars. But by and large, Nigerian leaders until 1914 were not brought together to advise the British about the direction of policy. The so-called “Nigerian Council” created by Lugard and to which belonged important indigenous rulers like the Alafin of Oyo and the Emir of Kano, was no more than an ineffective talkfest or causerie if it was even that, since “discussions” such as they were, were carried on in English, and these rulers spoke no English at all. It was not until the 1930s, through the meetings of native rulers organised by the British that the traditional elite in Nigeria began to perceive their common nationality and identity. Of course, the ordinary Nigerian people continued to engage only in trade relationships as before, and to regard themselves different from other Nigerians. It was, for example, quite normal for one group, particularly one which did not have much external contact before the advent of the British, to regard other groups as bogeymen and strangers with whom it was unsafe to associate.

January 21, 2016
Mr President, take a look at our 1970s

Mr President, I am sure you hear this everyday so I am not saying anything new – namely that you are producing a revolution. It appears that your promises are no longer just promises but a major programme of change and improvement in the quality of life in our country. A young Nigerian living abroad telephoned me a few days ago and he was totally ecstatic about the news from home. I am sure that many Nigerians at home feel the same way. From various directions, you are doing things that Nigerians had never imagined possible.

Take for instance what you are doing with our military bosses – about 20 generals being called to answer for the money they have allegedly been looting for decades. We used to be told that the military was incapable of fighting Boko Haram, that our young soldiers were being sent into battle without the right quantity and quality of arms and ammunition which meant that they were being sent to their sure deaths. Desertions became a regular feature in our military. It was so bad that the wives of soldiers demonstrated in the barracks because their husbands were being sent to their deaths. Some of our soldiers tried to kill their commanding officer. Morale in the military was at an all-time low. All in all, the image of Nigeria was being destroyed worldwide.

Thanks to your war on corruption we are now getting to the roots of these things. The number of hitherto untouchable eminent Nigerians involved and the huge amounts of money that are being mentioned makes the average Nigerian wonder how this country has survived until now. Obviously, the people stealing these humongous amounts of money were not only seeking to enrich themselves, they were actually engaged in an effort to destroy their country. If your effort against corruption succeeds to its logical conclusion, you may go down in history as the man who saved the image of the black man in the world.

It’s for these reasons that I have been coming up with suggestions about the directions in which you could take our country to the best advantage. Last week, I suggested that you focus on empowering our youths, giving them new skills and training them in job ethics, thereby attracting businesses and investment to our country. I described how the small country of Singapore achieved those purposes. Today, I want to show you an opportunity that existed in the 1970s but was rejected by our leaders of that time. The 1970s were a decade of choice for Nigeria. After putting an end to our civil war in 1970, we suddenly began to find ourselves in a lot of money coming from the mining and export of our oil. The rush of money was so great that our young head of state, General Gowon, told us Nigerians that we were making more money than we had the executive capacity to utilise. He then decided to pump the money into the pockets of Nigerians through wage increases and arrears of increases. It was a good and patriotic thing to do, but it was not backed by a careful study of its possible effects. The effect that immediately arose was that we began to import anything and everything.

Moreover, in the midst of the euphoria, our military rulers decided to themselves that they were entitled to become rich by sharing public money. A system of government was quickly established in which the stealing and sharing of public money was the norm. They destroyed the old rules and regulations that protected the nation’s purse and instituted various ways of direct access to it. The system became known as kleptocracy i.e. government of thieves for the principal purpose of stealing government money. The name became popular but unfortunately the system also became popular. It became the norm that if one got a job in the government it was paramount to show that one is doing very well for oneself. From all directions, Nigerians struggled to benefit from the system. The rest of the story is well known. Its chief consequence is poverty for masses of our people.

There was however another tendency alive at the same time. After Chief Awolowo came out of the Gowon military cabinet, his unhappiness with the growing system of corruption became gradually well known. Fortunately he was appointed Chancellor of the then University of Ife and that brought him frequently into the company of intellectuals who agreed with him on a whole lot of things. Around him a whole national movement gradually crystallised. The direction sought by the new movement was to terminate the corruption in the regime and to institute a new effort to use the huge oil revenues for a broad based development of our country. I write confidently about this movement because I was one of the persons in the centre of it. The objectives were to strengthen Nigeria firstly by improving upon the educational system and by empowering the local leadership of the various sections of Nigeria to promote the new education in their areas.

Secondly, we intended to promote a widespread programme of skills and entrepreneurial development among the youth. We intended also to put a lot of money in various programmes of micro credit and assistance to small businesses among our people. We planned to promote a strong programme of exportation of Nigerian goods, especially to the richest markets in the world. We wanted to make Nigeria the Japan of Africa. We also wanted to promote a programme of integrated rural development which would not only develop agriculture but also strengthen our rural populations.

Then we pinpointed certain broad national challenges that Nigeria needed to attend to emphatically, such as the encroachment of the Sahara desert, gully erosions in our eastern states, the terrible challenge of environmental degradation in the Niger delta states, and the growing threat of flooding in the Lagos area. But perhaps the most important of these challenges was the low level of education in the northern region. We intended to consult with our leaders in the north to produce a system acceptable to northerners for the expansion of education in the region.

The summary is that we wanted to put the opportunity to prosper within the reach of every Nigerian. We were confident that if we had the chance to institute these programmes, there would be no need to fight corruption at all because all the available money would be going into urgent development programmes. In the constitutional realm, we were sure that our country needed a properly structured federation. We studied the Indian example and came to the conclusion that each of the largest nationalities of Nigeria should constitute a state in the federation, and the small contiguous nationalities in various parts of the country should form local federations that would become states in the Nigerian federation.

This would have given us not more than 20 states in all. The objective of this was to give each Nigerian people a stake in their development and in the overall development of our country.

I urge you, Mr President to look again at this whole programme. It is a very significant part of the heritage of our country. We who put it together were sure that it would make our country prosperous – a great and powerful country in the world. I believe that if you look seriously at it you will agree that there cannot be any better way to destroy corruption. The actions you are taking now against prominent barons of corruption are commendable but I believe that the system that was developed in the 1970s would go a long way in destroying corruption for good and making our country prosperous and great.

Ultimately as you would remember Mr President, our movement became the Unity Party of Nigeria. It was a broad and bold national effort towards greatness, prosperity and power. There was absolutely nothing sectional about it. Our leadership included brave men and women from all over the country eager for a new and prosperous Nigeria. As most Nigerians would remember the movement succeeded tremendously but the military leaders of the time did not want that kind of change. I believe the time has come for that change and I wish you Godspeed and I wish Nigeria the very bestof luck.

January 21, 2016
Not the people’s Generals

Nations do not joke with the funding of their armed forces. This is why in most cases, Defence gets a huge chunk of the budget. By setting aside a large sum for Defence, a country is preparing its military for any eventuality. A nation’s military is not built in a day, it is developed over time and it takes successive administrations to work at it. A nation that waits until it has to fight a war before it builds its military is only courting disaster.

The military plays a crucial role in the life of a nation. It is the bulwark against external aggression. So, for the military to defend the territorial integrity of a nation, it must be well equipped and its personnel well catered for. When soldiers are well kitted they too will give of their best. To whom much is given, the saying goes, much is expected. But where soldiers are not motivated, they cannot be expected to perform wonders. They will flee from the enemy as we have been seeing some of our soldiers do in the fight against Boko Haram.

A soldier is expected to go to war with arms and ammunition and in these days of technological advancement, he must also be schooled in the use of high-tech weapons and other state-of-the-art war toys. No nation sends its soldiers to war with biscuits in their hands because the battlefield is not for wining and dining; it is for fighting. During the Civil War, our soldiers discharged themselves well, fighting to keep Nigeria one, but in the last three years, these same soldiers were until recently finding it difficult to get their bearings right in the encounter with Boko Haram.

Why will a well trained army like ours run away from a ragtag bunch of Boko Haram elements? Why? We now know why. The funds for the acquisition of arms and ammunition and other war equipment were spent on frivolities by those charged with securing us. The Dasukigate has opened our eyes to what happened to the $2.1 billion meant for the purchase of war planes and other weapons to fight Boko Haram. Instead of spending the money on what it was meant for, the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col Sambo Dasuki, resorted to sharing it out among politicians and friends of the immediate past administration.

The poor soldiers sent to fight Boko Haram were not given anything to defend themselves. When they retreated from battle, they were tagged cowards and court martialled. Some were sentenced to death; some were jailed and some were dismissed. The generals who sent them to battle without weapons derided them. Immediate past Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, who along with 19 others, are to be probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for their alleged roles in arm purchases for the Air Force between 2007 and last year, once said that the soldier’s oath to defend his country is sacrosanct. A soldier did not take oath to run away from battle, he said. Yes, that is true to a certain extent because there is a condition precedent to be fulfilled for a soldier to lay down his life for his country. Unfortunately, Badeh did not address this condition, which is the authority must provide the soldier the instruments of war to be able to defend himself and country

Did Badeh as CDS ensure that these soldiers were well armed before sending them to battle? If he did, he would have been justified in setting up the court martial, which sent some soldiers to death for alleged mutiny. But if he did not, he should be made to face the consequences of his action – the killing of innocent souls by sending them to battle without equipping them. A general is expected to look out for his men and not to hasten their death by ill-preparing them for battle. As President Muhammadu Buhari said on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last December 28, the soldiers were provoked to mutiny by the actions of their bosses, who were only interested in catering for themselves.

‘’The government at that time sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition to prosecute the war. That was what led some of them to mutiny. They were arrested and detained because of this’’, the president said. Who is guilty between the soldiers and the generals? It is criminal to send a soldier to war without giving him weapons. It is heinous for a general to now turn around to punish the soldier for the failure to do his own job. It is the generals’ job to provide their soldiers with guns. Why didn’t they do so? What is their defence to this criminal conspiracy to deliberately waste the lives of these young men?

This is why the probe of Badeh, Air Marshal M.D. Umar, Air Marshal A.N. Amosu, Maj Gen E.R. Chioba, Air Vice Marshal (AVM) I.A. Balogun, AVM A.G. Tsakr, AVM A.G. Idowu, AVM A.M. Mamu, AVM O.T. Oguntoyinbo, AVM T. Omenyi, AVM J.B. Adigun, AVM R.A. Ojuawo, AVM J.A. Kayode-Beckley, Air Commodore S.A. Yushau, Air Commodore A.O. Ogunjobi, Air Commodore G.M.D. Gwani, Air Commodore S.O. Makinde, Air Commodore A.Y. Lassa, Col N. Ashinze and Lt Col M.S. Dasuki, is welcomed. Let them face the EFCC panel and tell the world what they did with the billions of naira that passed through their hands for the purchase of military aircraft. Did they spend the money judiciously?

We want to know what happened because that is the only way to prevent a recurrence and ensure that in future the military lacks nothing to confront internal and external aggression. If Boko Haram had been an external aggressor, where will we be today as a country? In his valedictory speech last July 30, Badeh, among other remarks, said : ‘’Over the years, the military was neglected and under-equipped to ensure the survival of certain regimes…’’ But when he had the opportunity to change things as CDS, what did he do? Nigerians are wiser than that. He cannot pull the wool over our eyes.

January 21, 2016
Buhari’s embarrassments

• (The chinks in Mr. President’s armour)

In an ideal world, the incumbent government would be a blight to Nigeria, a regression to coarse civilisation. But there is hardly anything ideal about our world thus we are stuck with a Hobson’s choice. Nonetheless, there is no gainsaying we dodged devastation by the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as President but profiteers by the old order consider Buhari’s moralist, disciplinarian stance as bad news; a perverse fetish. They believe that Buhari’s touted renouncement of corruption is childish and duplicitous. It isn’t.

Given that the National Assembly is currently infested by shades of poorly, repulsive characters, the nation’s hope rests on the Judiciary and Executive arms of government – the Presidency in particular as most state governors personify the worst of Nigeria’s political predators. Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo cut a portrait of hope and prosperity for the nation given both men’s alleged and fairly established distaste for corruption and their predilection to truly serve Nigeria, for the good of Nigerians.

However, this government rides on a great deal of presumption and moral baggage. While Buhari signifies hope, prudence and inestimable opportunity for redeeming our badly worn and bastardised social and political institutions, his team becomes the bane to the successful attainment of our ideal state.

Buhari’s ministers are hardly the man he is. They are no heroes neither are they emblems of the kind of probity epitomised by Buhari. They are inherently flawed in politics, personal ethics and humanity – just like too many of their ilk. They constitute the chink in Buhari’s armour and they are the ones that will sabotage his ambitious policies and plans for the country, if great care is not taken.

Of Buhari’s ministers, too many are vectors, mortal agents of the worst kind of viruses. Eventually, they will make Buhari’s government food for worms. From the moment of their appointment, the infestation of Buhari’s administration commenced but Buhari and his political groupies naively maintained that if the head – that is, Buhari – be moral, the body (his cabinet and underlings) too will have no choice but get with his program.

Buhari mistook and still confuses their obsequiousness, exaggerated display of loyalty and forthrightness with a heartfelt yearning to serve Nigeria and bolster his campaign to redeem the country from the jaws of his predatory ruling class.

Buhari’s ministers are dubious change agents feigning his moral and growth crusade. Like certain state governors and senators operating on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Buhari’s ministers epitomise a moral, philosophical duplicity; they negate and reject the strife of contraries by which true, positive ‘change’ evolves.

President Buhari of course must be aware of this bitter reality. If he isn’t, then he must be truly very naive and incapacitated by his overwhelming desire to grow bananas out of a pine tree.

Buhari must know that many of his ministers consider his touted chastity unnatural and morale-busting. They consider his anti-corruption crusade a swerve from reality and fruitfulness.

Buhari on the other hand, by demanding that they join and propagate his crusade, drifts closer to the silhouette of the eternal romantic or change fantasist, for whom honesty is imaginative perfection. Thus Buhari’s mantra of chastity and change is diametrically opposed to what most of his ministers think of it although they make a great show of being on the same page with him.

In urging his cabinet members to sheathe themselves against corruption by surrendering to his moralist communion, Buhari has been daubed by some of his most trusted ministers as a revolutionary of the comedies. They believe that if he persists in trying to eliminate besmirched society by redeeming morals, Buhari will eventually find himself in political dystopia.

In time, every inch of the country that he saves from corruption, will be lost in the desolate mile of his ministers,’ the senate’s and greater segment of the citizenry’s corrupt nature.

Consider the shameful and scandalous goings-on in some ministries as you read; recent victims of the corrupt system allege that, in some ministries, it’s still business as usual; you simply can’t walk in as an ordinary, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen and expect to enjoy the attention of your minister.

For instance, aides to certain ministers allegedly demand as much as N500, 000 just to help book an appointment with the ministers – it doesn’t matter that the ministers are public servants whose chief purpose is ‘to serve’ Nigeria and Nigerians. Will the ministers claim to be unaware of such shameful proceedings within their offices? Certainly, the rot that destroyed the immediate past government of President Goodluck Jonathan is still very much with us.

When news broke out about the alleged remuneration of members of Buhari’s cabinet, not a few Nigerians applauded the seemingly modest remuneration of the incumbent ministers but the latter’s apologists comprising their underlings and journalists on their cash-leash however, condemned the touted salary regime claiming it’s too poor for public officers of their calibre.

Eventually, speculations about their remuneration were laid to rest with the disclosure that each minister would earn about N14 to N15 million as annual salary and allowances – being the politically-correct figure though. This is undoubtedly poor by all standards to members of the cabinet, some of whom had enjoyed highly lucrative and vulgar spells as state governors and political jobbers before their current appointment.

Progressive and optimistic as it could be to imagine Buhari’s ministers as exemplary men and women whose antecedents, personal ethics and politics are unsullied and inspiring as their principal’s, truth is, the decadence that characterise most of them, will eventually establish Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade as a moral schlock, fostering duplicity instead of uprightness and division where there should be wholeness.

The onus therefore, falls on Buhari, the press and the Nigerian electorate to be vigilant. There is need to monitor how Mr. President’s team set about implementing the government’s policies and programmes. There is need to pay good mind to every detail. If we fail to do so, we would be shortchanging ourselves and future generations.

The incumbent government should be religiously scrutinised and kept on its toes given President Buhari’s incapacities at removing the specks in his eyes even as he labours and makes a public show of sanitising the country’s economic and political Augean stables.

Yes, Mr. President’s anti-corruption campaign is yielding great revelations; we need him to establish positive results from the revelations. Money recouped from Dasukigate saga and other scandalous schemes of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration should be applied where the impact would be felt positively and progressively in the lives of the citizenry.

More importantly, the citizenry and the nation’s press in particular, should never shy from supervising and critiquing every policy and action of Buhari and his cabinet constructively. As things are now, Buhari and Osinbajo seem the only individuals in his team, whose citizenship inspires; the rest of Mr. President’s cabinet awaken only fear and an unshakable foreboding of pilfering and misery in the hearts of the citizenry.

Buhari and his ministers are well provided for. Some of the incumbent ministers have amassed obscene wealth from their tenure as state governors; their wives don’t shop in the same market as our wives. Their children don’t attend the same schools as our children. They do not attend the same clinics as we do.

Beneath their platitudinous chants and political correctness, they do not care about us. Hence it is unarguably silly for any Nigerian to mount spirited defense for their oft oppressive and regressive actions. Let us make them account for the trust and destinies committed to their care; let us help them ennoble the public offices they occupy, for a ‘change.’

January 15, 2016
Let’s strike a bold new economic direction

The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics recently informed us that 60.9% of Nigerians live in ‘absolute poverty’, and that more of us are daily falling into that category. One of our former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo, has warned repeatedly that youth unemployment in our country is over 70%, stating that it is a major factor of our poverty and that Nigeria, for this reason, is sitting on a time bomb. Most Nigerians don’t understand the enormous weight that youth unemployment means. Our youths (aged 17 to 38) constitute the overwhelming majority of our population. Some statisticians say that people of this age bracket constitute as much as over 60% of our population. But they are not merely the majority amongst us, they are also the naturally strongest, most dynamic and most capable of production. They produce and nurse most of our babies and therefore have an enormous impact on our national character. They are the most agile, most inquisitive, most inventive and most venturesome section of our population. When we say that 70% of them are unemployed, we are saying something of tremendous importance. We are saying that we are losing the productive contribution of the largest, strongest, most dynamic and most productive section of our population. Rather than receiving production from them, we are having to provide for them from the little that the rest of us are able to produce. That is a major reason why more and more of us are falling into abject poverty. Massive youth unemployment is not something we should even think of living with. It is too dangerous. For instance it is not only robbing us of productivity, it is also plunging our society into crime. Denied productive employment, the agile hands and legs of our youth are producing aberrant behaviour in all sorts of fearful directions. As a result, informed observers classify Nigeria as one of the most unsafe places in the world in peacetime.

For decades, the truth of our existence as a country has been hidden from us (especially from the leaders and rulers of the nation) by the large revenues from crude oil. Our federal rulers could look at the endless seas of cash brought in by the rents and royalties of crude oil and delude themselves that we are a rich country. Our state governors and local government managers could go to Abuja and return with fat cheques and also deceive themselves that we are a rich country. Upon that whole edifice of self-deception, they proceeded to build a gigantic culture of public corruption. But now, the oil bonanza seems to be vanishing. Our self- deception is about to come to a crashing halt. We are obviously about to confront some very unpleasant truths as a nation. It is time for us to rush back to our youths – the most productive part of our economy- and call upon them to help. A bold new direction is urgently called for in our economy.

Fortunately at this critical moment, we have a president who has promised change and has declared war on the culture of public corruption. It is therefore greatly welcome that President Muhammadu Buhari, in his first budget, is promising major steps towards youth development in order to empower and employ our youths. We must pray that he is able to push it as fast and as far as the situation demands. While he and his men are putting together the elements of the programme on youth development, I would like to offer him the suggestion that he should look at what Singapore did between 1965 and 1975. By 1965 Singapore was a desperately poor province of the Federation of Malaysia. It had no resources in land, forests, minerals, or even soft water. It was riddled with violent, corrupt and riotous politics. Almost all its youths were unemployed and unemployable. Crime was rampant. To do business at all, business owners usually had to surrender to extortion and make regular secret payments to criminal gangs. Masses of youths frequently rioted in the streets and the federal government regularly deployed security forces there to tackle the riots. One huge riot in 1965 went on for three months! As a result of this constant trouble, the federal prime minister proposed at the parliament that Singapore be expelled from the federation. Parliament overwhelmingly approved and Singapore suddenly found itself a separate country without any preparation. No country can be poorer than that. The leading Singaporean politician, a lawyer named Lee Kuan Yew, wept as he made the devastating announcement to his country. “For me and for Singapore”, he sobbed over the radio, “this is a day of anguish”.

Yet, by 1975, 10 years later, Singapore had become one of the most successful economies in the world. By 1976 when I visited Singapore, most of the world was already celebrating Singapore as “the Asian Success Model”. So how did Singapore do it? The central piece in their programme of development was to focus on the youth and to call them out to work. But first as preliminary, all the politicians agreed to commit to a responsible, cautious and orderly politics. As the country’s partisan and inter-ethnic politics simmered down, the youth riots gradually waned too. Then the government and leaders agreed on a bold new agenda to make the youths employable. Various institutions were created to teach modern job skills. Some businesses were licensed to teach job skills in their premises under government supervision. All of the training was accompanied by very serious programmes of work ethics. To prepare the younger children for the system, very serious effort was put into improving education at the primary and secondary levels. Within years, Singapore’s workers had become known worldwide as skilled workers and highly dependable employees. As a result, businesses hurried to establish branches in Singapore and investors rushed there. Singapore’s people themselves then developed confidence to start businesses. By and by, a strong programme of infrastructural development followed. Singapore has continued to prosper. Its workmen are proud in their skills and in their efficiency and high work ethics. They are known to always seek to improve their service in all directions. Singapore’s educational system is now widely regarded as one of the best in the world. In fact, in education, this little country has much to teach the world, including even the giant, United States of America.

In short, Nigeria’s youth development programme must focus on a sound combination of job and entrepreneurial skills and work ethics amongst our youths. It is not enough for a young, agile, intelligent and creative person to have good job skills, it is also critically important that he should be loyal to the success of his employers. A great deal of unemployment among our youth is a result of a lack of modern job skills. Even the job opportunities that are available struggle to find skilled workers. For instance our cities are expanding tremendously and that means a lot of jobs in the building trade. Sadly, it is well known that builders these days are having to recruit workmen from other countries. A foreign company that won a contract to clean and plumb ships in the Apapa ports just could not find suitable Nigerian plumbers and had to recruit low level plumbers from their own country in Europe. It is also well known that there is a myth in Nigeria and abroad, that Nigerian workers are too disloyal to be employed. Of course the myth is unfair to a lot of our youth, but that’s what myths do – they include the good with the bad. Our youths desperately and urgently need a massive national programme of job and entrepreneurial skills and work ethics. We are well able to turn our economy around in just a few years. One must add of course is the promoter of this programme, each state must be used as the development unit in it and the state authorities empowered for that role. I hope President Buhari’s people are reading this. We must all wish them good success.

January 14, 2016
‘Dasugate’ brings Falae’s past to pain

Olu Falae, Secretary to the Federal Government (1986-1990) during the baleful years of Babangida’s ‘transition without end’ might have served as a Minister of Finance for a brief period in 1990 without collecting salary, managed to keep the exchange rate at N7.50k to one dollar until his exit in 1990 when it went down to N70 to a dollar. He was jailed as a NADECO chieftain by Abacha for standing by MKO Abiola during his failed battle to reclaim the victory freely and overwhelmingly given to him by Nigerians. Unfortunately these personal sacrifices and resourcefulness are not what will determine his legacies as a bureaucrat, banker and politician/elder statesman. Nigerians are likely going to remember him more as the intellectual pillar for Babangida disastrous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and a leader who partook of ‘Dasukigate’ slush fund to the tune of N100m ostensibly on behalf of his little known Social Democratic Party, (SDP), many believed, was sponsored by President Jonathan during the convocation of a self-serving Confab by a drowning government to undermine Bola Tinubu and his new Yoruba political leaders and in the process whittle down the influence of APC in the South- west.

But as it is often said, truth is immanent. Like water, it will find its way to torment and deride its enemies. ‘Dasukigate’ has now provided an opportunity to critically examine not only the motive of sponsors of a fringe party like Social Democratic Party with little or no electoral value, the despicable and unpatriotic objectives of its promoters but also to examine how Chief Olu Falae’s intervention at a critical period in our history contributed to the frustration of young Nigerian professionals who fled the country to work as second class citizens in Europe and America. Despite Margret Thatcher’s introduction of VISA following Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu’s SAP, we today have up to two million well-trained Nigerians in Britain. The effect of SAP has been more devastating at home. Today there are millions of frustrated well-educated Nigerians youths in their late twenties and early thirties, regarded by many as a lost generation, who are still tied to the aprons of their parents at an age their peers during the pre and post independent years had already assumed leadership.

General Ibrahim Babangida, Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu back in 1986 decreed ‘there was no alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)’, an IMF economic poison, designed by the developed economies to solve their own social problems by further impoverishing the underdeveloped economies. The late Professor Sam Aluko dismissed such claim as intellectual fraud insisting there was even an alternative to death. Eskor Tuoyo and his group of radical thinkers correctly predicted the fate that finally befell Nigeria- the collapse of our industrial sector and condemnation of Nigeria to net importers of labour of other societies while our own youths roam the streets.

Falae, as an accessory to ill-conceived and badly implemented privatization and liberalization economic policy that allowed a few families, military men and their fronts to fraudulently corner our national assets is responsible for the disarray and a future of uncertainty of Nigerians in their early thirties who have opted or are eager to become slaves in Europe and America. Our frustrated youths who chose to ‘check out’ in droves through the desert and the sea have little to look up to following the confiscation of our national assets which started during the Babangida regime when for example, 60% of a company like the Ikeja Cocoa Industries Limited (CIL) which rightly belong to the children of poor western Nigeria cocoa farmers was sold to a newly registered Emerald Packaging Company for a miserable N9m, an amount lower than the cost of land on which the then 24 years old manufacturing company minus its machineries, raw materials and their other assets were located. This trend was completed by Babangida’s laboratory-baked PDP ‘new breed’ politicians who traded off national assets worth about $100b according to El Rufai, one time BPE Director General, for less than $5b between 1999 and 2014. Chief Olu Falae never took responsibility for his role as an accessory to crime of mortgaging the future of a whole generation of Nigerians.

Now the past has been brought to pain with the ‘Dasukigate’ which revealed that N260m of the $2.1b earmarked for arms to equip our embattled military found its way into to the account of Tony Anenih, a PDP chieftain. Anenih had said in his defence that the money, only a fraction of over N400m he claimed to have spent on his own for the 2015 battle, was ‘a part refund of the money former President Goodluck Jonathan instructed him to release to some political groups for mobilisation and post-election peace advocacy’. Of the amount, he said Chief Falae, the leader and founder of Social Democratic Party got N100m,Chief Rashidi Ladoja, leader of Accord Party got N100m while the remaining N63m went to a group headed by elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai . All the three elder-statesmen admitted the funds were meant to advance the chances of Jonathan in the 2015 election…

But Chief Falae like most well-informed Nigerians knew that another four years of Jonathan would have been disastrous for nation, that during his over five years in office, he served none but self and PDP wheelers and dealers and that those desperate for his re-election and who were moving around the country selling lies called ‘transformation agenda’ to our people were led mostly by those indicted by various House probes for pillaging the country resources. Having undermined the PDP constitution by contesting in 2010 and for reneging on an undertaking to do only one term, Chief Falae knew it was immoral for Jonathan to contest the 2015 election. Chief Falae similarly knew Jonathan’s attempt to exploit our religion and ethnic differences for electoral gain was a threat to national unity.

At the Chief Falae’s Yoruba home front where leadership is earned and lost when leaders betray the trust of the people, he knew that by openly identifying with the likes of Ayo Fayose, Olusegun Mimiko, Gbenga Daniel, Bode George and Musliu Obanikoro, that he and his half a dozen fellow Afenifere oligarchs who behave like cult members have lost their grip on the Yoruba voters. More than anybody else, Falae knew his Yoruba people who Awo back in 1947 said would not vote for you because you are a Yoruba man if you have no policy that will positively affect his life, would not vote for Jonathan who besides marginalizing Yoruba that fought for his emergence, but also remained a clueless leader all through his presidency. Finally, Falae more than anyone knew that Yoruba, the only group that has remained faithful to the idea of a united Nigeria since independence despite their endless campaign for regional autonomy and workable federalism, would not vote for a divisive candidate who had become a threat to the survival of Nigeria as a nation of many nationalities.

Why then did a brilliant and respected Falae, a man not known for greed go ahead to dirty his hands with PDP’s N100m bribe even with the full knowledge of the consequences of his action and the fate that awaits Yoruba leaders that swim against the general tide from an unforgiving followers? There are two plausible explanations in my view. He, like other members of Afenifere oligarchy was probably envious of the success of Bola Tinubu who with the support of young Yoruba intellectuals effortlessly retired them from politics after achieving what they had been unable to achieve during a lifelong battle –joining the Nigerian mainstream politics as an equal partner. It is also possible that our respected Falae had expected a repeat of the ‘Ekiti Magic’ and underestimated the resolve of Nigerians and the efficacy of the voters card reader which for the first time allowed votes to count. But either way, I sympathise with Falae. He knows the fate that awaits him. The Yoruba hardly forgive when leaders who they look up to for direction commit error of judgment.

January 14, 2016
Prayers and advice to government

In 1983, the Nigerian military after a disastrous federal elections marred by flagrant rigging took over power and chose the then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as head of state. He issued a quotable statement that we have no other country than Nigeria and that emigrating was not an option for young Nigerians and that we were going to stay in our country and solve our country’s problems together. History seems to be repeating itself bearing out George Santayana’s dictum that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The same Buhari is faced with how to get Nigeria out of its economic quagmire caused by mismanagement of national resources, stealing, squander mania and collapse of the international price of hydrocarbons on which Nigeria’s economy has unfortunately depended over these years. The first administration of Buhari ably supported by Major-General Tunde Idiagbon dealt harshly with those who were found guilty of financial roguery as any military regime would have done. Those who were accused were dealt with through the legal system and no special military tribunals were set up. Revisionist historians and commentators sometimes give the impression that the military government of that time operated without following the law. It was only in the case of drug smuggling that some two young men were made to face the death penalty by the wrong application of a decree that was made retroactive. The other dark spot of that regime was the law of sedition that made publication of government secrets punishable by imprisonment. His Attorney General, the Distinguished and reputable Onitsha lawyer, Chike Offordile ensured that necessary decrees were crafted to deal with terrible moral and financial turpitude of those days. Ganiyu Fawehinmi who cannot be said to be a military apologist supported the steps taken by that regime to whip us Nigerians into path of discipline and rectitude.

I am recalling those days to compare with today when the president seems to be taking his time to avoid repeating any mistake of those days. We of course do not have the luxury of time. We are a rather impatient country and rightly so. We have waited for good governance for too long and now that it seems we may have one we are rightly and justifiably in a hurry to see the dividends of good governance.

The president himself told the BBC in a recent interview that when a fish is rotten from the head, it affects the entire body of the fish meaning that since he is not corrupt he would prevent others from being corrupt. It is not going to be like a previous regime that says stealing is not corruption implying that stealing is tolerable! This is the first time we are having a regime since independence that sees a nexus between underdevelopment and corruption. There is enough in this country to take care of our needs and not our wants and our greed. There is a commitment on the part of the executive for good governance and transparency. Perhaps its example will resonate with the legislative and the judicial branches of government across the country. Sometimes we neglect to focus on the corruption in the judiciary because of the arcane nature of the institution. A corrupt judiciary is in fact more dangerous to the welfare of the state than corruption in the other two branches of government. This is because of the finality of judicial pronouncement. After the Supreme Court has decided, there is no other body that can countermand that decision. This is why we say the courts are the final saviour and arbiter for the common man. If we can curb corruption in all the branches of government, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and hope for good things to come the way of our country.

If there is minimal corruption then prudent management of national resources will automatically follow. Questions of misappropriation, misapplication and misuse of resources will be reduced to minimum. Funds meant for the military will not be given to politicians. Loans secured for railway modernization will not be diverted to politicians as happened in the last regime and any one caught doing the wrong thing will be dealt with according to law. Judges will not be bought to deliver judgement according to the illegal deposits in their banks and paid holidays for them and their families by criminals. There was a case of corruption involving a former governor who was facing 40 allegations before a so called learned judge . He promptly threw out all the charges and pronounced the former governor innocent. This same governor was seized by INTERPOL at the request of Britain to face same charges in London. He was not only convicted, his lawyer, wife and two girl friends are serving term with him in Her Majesty’s prison. This reminds me what a friend told me in Lagos some years ago that if he had a case in court rather than hire lawyers, he would take the money for lawyers to purchase judgment in the judge’s chamber! While trying to uproot corruption from state institutions, we must not lose sight of the judiciary.

The economic situation will present the greatest challenge to this regime. I sometimes get angry when I hear apparently educated people blaming this government for the falling value of the naira vis-à-vis foreign currencies. It is simple arithmetic. Crude oil on which we are hopelessly dependent has fallen from a high of 140 dollars a barrel to 36 dollars and it is still going down. This has led to a diminution of foreign money accruable into our foreign reserves with the consequence of more naira in hands than dollar reserves. To strengthen the naira, we have either to export more produce apart from hydrocarbons or drastically reduce imports. There is no magic in this. If you bring a professor of economics from Harvard or the World Bank, he or she would not perform any magic. So the way forward is to find other sources of revenue apart from oil. We can increase taxes and also the efficiency of tax collection. The easy one is to increase Value Added Tax which is tax on consumption which will largely fall on the elite. But everybody must be made to pay taxes no matter how small. This is the way to make the people feel they own the government. They will therefore be more vigilant in protecting government property and calling to order those who think government property belongs to nobody. All these measures are for home consumption. A strong government at home will be respected abroad. This is where in comes in the exploitation of our relations with the outside world.

This government must use its contact through membership in OPEC to prevail on its Arab members not to flood the world oil market with overproduction of crude. It is not in anybody’s interest. Non OPEC countries like Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Russia and some of the countries in the Caucasus must be made to realize that the collapse of the oil economy globally will not be in the interest of all. If the world goes into another recession so soon after eight years of the last recession, we will all suffer. It will be a difficult sell but we should try by asking for an extra ordinary meeting of OPEC to discuss a coordinated rescue plan for the global oil market. But charity must begin at home. We should put all efforts to engender a disconnect from dependency on oil, find other sources of income from agriculture, light manufacturing, efficient tax regime and exploitation of solid minerals. We are not the worst hit of all OPEC countries. We can grow all we need to feed ourselves and to export. We therefore need not be desperate.

These are difficult times. We need not deny it. Financing our budget through borrowing is not as strange as some economic illiterates who have been criticizing the government would make us believe. Japan has the highest rate of borrowing in the world at 356 percent of its GDP and nobody is wailing that the country would soon go under. The USA is a close second in the rate of borrowing. As long as borrowing is not for consumption, the country can grow its economy out of this short-term debt. Those who are shouting about deficit budget are the same people who brought us to our financial knees.

Whatever government is going to do or is already doing cannot be achieved without hard work. Our people must be told that they have to work hard and there is no more free lunch anywhere anymore. They have to be carried along. Many toes would have to be stepped upon physically and figuratively. Because of this the enemies of Nigeria both at home and abroad would like to destabilize the country or even overthrow this government through fanning of the ember of religious and ethnic fanaticism and division. Eternal vigilance and survival is the first law of nature. While government must follow the rule of law generally, it must not lower its guard and allow its enemies to deal a mortal blow to it.

January 14, 2016
Remembering January 15, 1966

On Saturday, January 15, 1966, 50 years ago, five Army majors and accomplices of the Nigerian military seized power, overturning the democratically-elected civilian coalition federal government of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. It was the first time the military intervened directly in Nigeria’s political affairs. The coup was bloody, leading to the death of several key political figures, including the Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, his Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Northern Region Premier, the Sardauna of Sokoto and the Western Region Premier, Chief Ladoke Akintola. In the course of the military coup d’état, scores of senior military officers, some of the best in the Nigerian Army, were also killed.

It is a date that I will always remember, but not simply because the first ever military coup in Nigeria took place on that day. Rather, it is because it was the day that I had chosen to marry and proceed to London on my first diplomatic posting abroad. I had joined the Foreign Service in 1964 on graduating from the then University College, Ibadan, and looked forward eagerly to my first posting abroad. That date, January 15, 1966, also my wedding day, turned out to be ominous. In my memoires, Lest I Forget’, published in 2013, nearly 50 years after, I have made some brief references to the events of January 15, 1966, as they affected me personally Some of the materials in this article are from the memoires.

There had, for some time, been rumours of an imminent military coup in Nigeria, but very few really took those rumours seriously. Although there had been a lot of tension in the country in the wake of the lingering political crises in the then Western Region, the Nigerian Army had a solid reputation as a professional, loyal and stable army that was unlikely to stage a coup against the federal government. It had been involved in maintaining peace under UN forces in the Congo in 1960-61, and in 1962 and 1963 had helped the governments of Uganda and Tanzania to put down the rebellion of their own armies. So, most people ignored the persistent rumours of an imminent army coup. As we were to learn later, even the Balewa federal government ignored intelligence reports that a military coup against the government was in the offing. The coup took everyone by surprise. The coup destroyed the professional reputation of the Nigerian Army.

I woke up early that Saturday morning on January 15 to prepare for both my wedding in the morning at 10 am and my departure with my wife for London in the evening. I left home early for my wedding that Saturday morning thinking of only my wedding and my departure for London later in the evening. Suddenly, I saw a convoy of military vehicles, including APCs behind my car, at Kingsway, Ikoyi, driving furiously, with their sirens blaring. This was quite unusual in those days. I recognised the head of the Nigerian Army, Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi, in the lead car and quickly pulled my car off the road, after which I proceeded to my wedding without being unduly worried about the military convoy. The wedding over, we had planned a modest reception at my residence for our family and friends. But as we were leaving after the wedding, there were a lot of whispers that there had been a bloody coup in the country. Military check points and APCs began to appear all over Lagos. There were also reports that military checkpoints had emerged in the regional capitals of Ibadan, Kaduna, Benin and Enugu, and that both the Sardauna and Chief Akintola had been killed in the coup. But these reports could not yet be confirmed. The telephone lines had been cut,

Obviously, we could not in that tense and uncertain situation hold a wedding reception. At mid-day, there was a terse announcement on Radio Nigeria that ‘some dissident elements of the Nigerian Army ‘had abducted Prime Minister Balewa and his Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and that their whereabouts were unknown. The situation in Lagos was very tense and confusing. I felt irritated that the coup had occurred on our wedding day. In fact, I had been attached to Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus who was in Nigeria for the meeting in Lagos of the Commonwealth heads of governments. I was to have accompanied him to Enugu on his official visit there, but as I was proceeding to London, another officer replaced me. Otherwise, I would have been with him in Enugu when the army majors struck. He was brought back to Lagos hurriedly and flown out of the country.

The wedding over, my wife and I returned to our residence and, in the midst of the melodrama in Lagos, continued with our wedding arrangements. Our flight by British Airways to London from Ikeja Airport was scheduled for 10 pm. But in view of the widespread disturbances in Lagos, we decided to leave home early at 6 pm for the airport. But we could not, at first, get to the airport. We were turned back by an unruly band of soldiers at the Ikeja military Cantonment. They appeared ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. There was a complete breakdown of law and order in Lagos. Then my late mother in-law, a matron at a Yaba hospital, offered us an ambulance to take us to the airport. We accepted her kind offer, but we were not sure how the soldiers would respond to our ploy. Happily, we scaled through unhurt. The ambulance was searched but we were waved through. The soldiers believed we were on a genuine mercy mission.

When we arrived at the airport at 9:30 pm there were a lot of British school children returning home after their holiday in Nigeria with their parents. It was not until midnight that the plane was cleared for take-off. We were stressed but relieved that we had finally left the chaos in Lagos behind us. We discovered later that all our friends and relations, including my father, who had gone to the airport to see us off on that day, were subsequently delayed at the airport for two days before being released.

We thought our ordeal was over, but this was not quite the case. When our plane landed at Kano airport at 1am, a military officer, who I recognised as Lt.-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, boarded the plane with some armed guards and conducted another search of every passenger on board the aircraft. He looked very stern. When he got to me and saw my diplomatic passport, he demanded angrily to know what the purpose of my mission to London was. I told him I was going there on posting. Not satisfied with my response, he ordered that I should disembark from the plane. I was then taken to a small military guardroom for further interrogation after which I was allowed to return to the plane. It was difficult to tell from his action whose side he was on, the federal government, or the coupists. Later, I came to the conclusion that he was simply an opportunist, who had decided to make the best of a confused situation in the Army. It is unlikely that he was personally involved in the coup plot.

When we arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport early on Sunday morning, I was totally unprepared for the rowdy reception we got there. We were the first passengers to arrive in London after the coup in Nigeria. The airport swarmed with journalists and camera crew eager to have first news about the disturbing situation in Nigeria. I was bombarded by the press with questions about the tragic events in Nigeria. As I knew very little about the situation in Nigeria, I declined all requests for my comments.

The experienced protocol officer, who met us at Heathrow, rushed me and my wife to a private waiting room, away from the prying eyes of the media men. We were driven off and taken to a hotel at The Strand, near Trafalgar Square. There he handed me a note from the acting High Commissioner, Mr. (later) Justice L.J. Dosumu, inviting my wife and I for lunch at his residence. He was naturally eager to be briefed about the coup in Nigeria, but I had very little information that could be useful to him. Telephone lines to Nigeria had been cut. It was not until several days later that the British press reported the horrifying events that had taken place in Nigeria on that Saturday, January 15, 1966, including the death of Prime Minister Balewa, the Sardauna and Chief Akintola.

In his broadcast on Radio Kaduna on the day of the coup, Major Nzegwu, the leader of the coup, claimed that “the aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong, united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and national strife…Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in the high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste….We do promise you freedom from fear and freedom from general inefficiency.” Very strong and idealistic words which the military never kept. Nigeria was laid bare and devastated after 29 long years of military rule. It is worse off today than it was on January 15, 1966.

I was in the High Commission in London when the country erupted into civil war in 1967. When the war ended in January, 1970, I was at Trinity College, Oxford.

January 14, 2016