The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Now they have a clue

    Now they have a clue

    They just don’t have a clue. So they often said of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Not anymore.

    The opposition party – sorry, the ruling party, Africa’s biggest and the one that has sworn to rule Nigeria for 60 years, in the first instance – has been derided as a gang of clueless politicians and expired tricksters, fraudsters and  pranksters by some idle commentators who don’t see any redeeming feature in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration’sTransformation Agenda (TA).

    With just a few days to the general elections, the party has regained its form. The President was in Lagos the other day to listen to some youths with whom he danced Shoki – the erotic dance in which the dancer covers his right eye with his right palm, bends his or her legs and throws his or her left arm across the body, which is twisted seductively. Dr Jonathan, polo shirt, designer fez cap and all, made a good job of it. He was all smiles. The young men and women were struggling for selfies with His Excellency.

    Soon, those who say he has no clue will see how the new vote harvesting formula will be pressed into service. Never mind that some of the President’s guests were actually decked out in dresses that left so much to the imagination. A friend of mine who saw it all on television praised the President’s endurance as one girl, almost topless, laps exposed and face beaming, sat next to His Excellency, holding his hand and screaming excitedly into the mic.

    But the season of clues, apparently occasioned by the dubious – that’s what the critics call it – six-week postponement of the general elections is not all about wooing would-be voters or devising new baits for votes.  Gone are the days when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), confronted by the myriads of ailments that trouble Nigeria, simply wrung its hands in utter cluelessness. Not anymore.

    Consider the long petrol queues at our filling stations. Just before now, it used to be rows and rows of jerry cans that went on as far as our eyes could see, waiting to be filled with kerosene. Now the days of fisticuffs at petrol pumps are back. Fares have gone up and many man-hours have been lost. After a rigorous research – a source told me that no fewer than 10 professors of no mean reputation joined forces in the mental exertion – PDP Chairman Adamu Muazu broke the news: the All Progressives Congress (APC) is behind the fuel crisis.

    Even before he finished announcing this remarkable breakthrough, those critics of whom I had earlier spoken, the ones who are so blind to the marvel of TA, started grumbling. Does APC own the filling stations? Is APC behind the multi-billion dollar fuel subsidy fraud? Are those named in the massive fraud not the ones leading Jonathan’s campaign? Who has been frustrating Jonathan’s attempts to fix the refineries? The questions were many.

    Instead of hailing Muazu for this discovery, the critics pilloried him to no end. The soft ones said his announcement was an unparalleled exhibition of buffoonery. Others, the harsh critics, called Muazu a misfit. Haba! Just for announcing the result of a painstaking exercise? Yet, some demanded an apology, saying since Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has confirmed that marketers were being owed N185b, the honourable thing is to apologise to the PDP. Apology? Won’t that show cluelessness?

    Even the recent crash of the naira against the dollar has been seen in the ruling party as a device of the opposition to weaken the local currency, make it worthless and, by so doing, incite the unsuspecting citizenry against the government. But, those who do not understand the politics of the policy have explained that the tumbling oil prices have affected the strength of the naira against the dollar. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), after many battles to prop up the naira, eventually devalued the currency, they said.

    After a sober reflection on the matter and due consultations with its team of financial experts, the PDP, I am told by a source, is set to announce its discovery of how the APC caused the naira to slip before pushing it to fall, a devastating fall from which it is struggling to recover – all because it wants to take power from PDP. It takes a party of intellectuals to get such a clue. Kudos to PDP.

    Boko Haram has been around for some time. Its leader Mohammed Yusuf was murdered in police custody in 2009. The incident changed the group dramatically, sending it on a violent mission from which it has refused to return. Thousands are dead, hundreds, among them the pitiable Chibok schoolgirls, are being held hostage and several others are conscripted into the sect’s forces, forced to fight for nothing.

    Now, the PDP has a clue. Boko Haram’s sponsors are in the APC. Like every other discovery, this has infuriated the critics, who have been querying the assertion. At what point did APC start sponsoring Boko Haram? Are the states worst-hit by the insurgency not APC’s? Why was Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate, attacked by bombers suspected to be on errand for the sect in Kaduna? Are some of those accused of being the godfathers of the deadly sect not found around the President? Don’t they go about with soldiers as if they are some war commanders?

    The critics, who obviously still doubt that the PDP has a clue to the ocean of problems in which we are immersed, went on: “Is it the business of the opposition party to fund and equip the armed forces? Where is our soldiers’ newfound fire power coming from? Why did it take the Commander-in-Chief so long to go near the trouble spot? Why won’t he go to Chibok to comfort the parents of the abducted girls and assure them that their kids will never be forgotten?”

    Trust the PDP. It would not be moved by such sanctimonious talks of showing leadership and empathy. No. Only recently it found a clue to the dwindling power supply. From about 4,000 MW at its peak, power generation has dipped to 2,886.87MW.

    Those who claim to be familiar with the industry have said that the power situation has gone this bad because a major gas supplier has shut down its facility for routine repairs. The PDP and its followers would have accepted such an explanation, had things been normal, but this is a season of politics. I am sure by now you should know those behind the poor power supply. And no prize for guessing right.

    Until recently, there has been so much outcry about a missing $20b oil money. Amid the din, the President cautioned us all to draw the line between stealing and corruption. “If you look at the perception of corruption or perception index, people talk about corruption now because it has become a political issue. And when you promote something to a level of politics, of course, it will blow out of proportion,” he said on Monday in an interview with Al Jazeera.

    Dr Jonathan went on: “Yes, we have corruption cases…we have cases of people stealing; no doubt about that. I always say that, call a thief a thief. I am not saying that we don’t have this element of corruption or stealing. If you start from the former Central Bank governor, who initially said that $49.8 billion was missing; $49.8 billion is a lot of money. What is the budget of this country for God’s sake?

    “Our budget has been a little over N3 trillion. Federal Government’s budget is about $18-20 billion a year and you are saying we lost $49.8 billion. If today we lose $49.8 billion, federal and state governments will not pay salaries. I don’t know how he came about that figure. The next moment he changed from $49.8 billion to $12 billion. The next day, it was $20 billion. Up to this time, I don’t know which is the correct accusation. The Senate set up a committee and they used consultants; they looked into it and said over $2 billion that could not be properly balanced. They did not say that somebody stole it. No evidence to say it was stolen but that it was not properly balanced.”

    Sir, before concluding that no money is missing or stolen, wouldn’t you rather check with the APC?

    We have been celebrating our narrow escape from the Ebola disease, which American-Liberian Patrick Sawyer imported to Lagos. Nobody knew why and how the late Sawyer chose to come to Nigeria. A source has just told me that as part of its campaign scheme, the PDP is set to reveal, after a presidential panel’s prognosis of the disease, those who not just advised the man to come here, but physically helped him to land in Lagos. I guess you have a clue to the answer. Again, no prize for guessing right. APC.

    Another source has told me of a massive investigation that will unravel the secret of how our over $60b foreign reserve (2008) went down to $32b. The money, said the source, is likely to reduce further if the authorities do not move fast to smash the politics that has led to this significant depletion. Even as we await the result of this venture, isn’t it easy to guess who is behind this? Go ahead and guess, but again don’t expect a handshake for guessing right.

    Now, who says our President and his party are clueless?

  • ‘Niggers’ with attitude

     (Portrait of the Nigerian as a ‘black’ ant)

    We live to a devastating stereotype. Like fattened ducks, we waddle against the walls of institutionalized pigeonholes as the ram thrashes in its soul at the descent of the butcher’s jackknife. But we are no ducks neither are we cattle of any kind. We are humans, learning to live as livestock, because we think it’s shrewd and fashionable to do so.

    Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, however contented, never know, writes Cowper and quite truthfully too. The tragedy is in the details. And the details are all around us, in our past glories and defeat, infinite quirks and measured sobriety. It is in our fabled heritage and defunct humanity, colourful history and grand inadequacies. It’s what separates our foibles from what we term fate. And what symbolizes our mental inferiorities and political expediencies.

    But necessity, like William Pitt the Younger would say, is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. Slaves like the Nigerian nigger.

    A 27-minute video among other things, distinguishes a select few of Nigeria’s pioneer statesmen from the gangs of glorified eejits – if I may insult poor eejits by comparing them to the country’s ruling class – that currently occupy the country’s corridors of power. The video is of the July 1961 visit of Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to the United States of America (USA).

    Great thanks to Farooq Kperogi, a Nigerian scholar resident in the USA; after he stumbled on the video on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, he promptly shared it with friends on Facebook. The video is intense with charm and instructive with lessons in manhood, desirable pride, poise and refinement epitomized by the league of extraordinary statesmen that served Nigeria at independence.

    Between July 25 and 28, Kperogi, enthused and I confirmed in the video, the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and a modest entourage of about 10 key government officials visited the United States on the invitation of the late President John F. Kennedy during which Tafawa Balewa visited major historical landmarks in representative parts of the United States and addressed a special joint session of the United States Congress that was convened in his honor.

    Only a select few, as Kperogi noted, “Are accorded the honour of addressing a joint session of the United States Congress. Certainly no Nigerian head of state has been accorded this honour since Tafawa Balewa.”

    According to the website of the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, since 1874 when the King of Hawaii first addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, there have been only 112 such privileges granted to foreign leaders and dignitaries.

    Watching the video was as enchanting as it was delightful; Balewa’s address to the joint session was persistently “punctuated” by thunderous, standing ovation. In all the cities he and his entourage visited, Americans came out to wave at them hospitably, and U.S. government officials bowed very respectfully when they shook hands with the Nigerian Prime Minister. Thus was the depth of respect the pioneer Nigerian leader and nationalist inspired in 1960s America.

    Men like Balewa and his contemporaries at the period in the persons of the late Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe to mention a few, personified the infectious grandeur, unimpeachable character, progressiveness, patriotism, depth and self-assurance that remains the prime requirements of statesmanship that Nigeria and the African continent deserves. These men, despite their shortcomings, were no Nigerian niggers. The same can hardly be said of incumbent Nigerian leadership and citizenry.

    The Nigerian leadership today could be likened to men gifted with the mentality of the hyena and the sensibility of the guinea fowl. The same may be said of the Nigerian citizenry. Our lust for unearned riches, acclaim and the west’s approval illustrates the shallowness and weakness of the Nigerian adult’s ignorance and awfully preadolescent mind. It reiterates a very shrill cry for help that’s at once self-seeking, infantile and retrograde.

    It is what makes Nigerian leaders pilfer and deplete the nation’s treasury to embark on foolhardy trips abroad to learn western-european governance styles to be ineffectually applied back home. It is what makes Nigerian leaders throw their doors open to every visiting foreign cub reporter even as they deny seasoned journalists back home, similar opportunities. During such interviews, such characters persistently expose themselves to ridicule, presenting themselves as inveterate idiots by their comportment and utterances which are tailored to glorify the disturbing plots and agenda of the foreign newshounds.

    The citizenry is guilty of the same inanity as indicated by the widely broadcast documentaries on Niger Delta militancy, the insidiously “professional” and manipulative “This is Lagos” and “Law and Disorder in Lagos” documentaries on Lagos which glorifies the city’s shanty and street urchin (area boys) culture and malaise. Such media fare reveals contemptible plots to fulfill derogatory news agendas to the delight and pitiful acquiescence of the news subjects.

    I am yet to see a Nigerian journalist travel to the United Kingdom or the US for instance, to enjoy similar courtesies and stupidity from the countries’ leadership and citizenry. It’s even more worrisome to note that the incumbent Nigerian leadership has never enjoyed and will never enjoy the kind of respect accorded the late Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo and their ilk at independence. It is impossible for the average Nigerian to enjoy such courtesies and honor given the inexplicable greed, complacence, degeneracy, shallowness of thought and character characteristic of majority of the Nigerian people.

    The kind of inferiority complex projected by the ruling class and passed down to generations of Nigerian youth affirms the western belief that we are not as mentally proficient as they are. Consequently, they see us as irredeemably ignorant, inept, corrupt and susceptible to inexplicable violence and inferiority complex. Unfortunately, the average Nigerian’s sociability and prodigal nature manifests to further serve as evidence of a collective idiocy and inferiority complex of a crude race that recognizes and accepts its intolerable limitations.

    That we are very accommodating and hospitable like Akin Akindele rightly noted shouldn’t make us “bend over backwards to impress any white or yellow man more than we would any other ordinary person.” But the import of such admonition is lost on us; mediocre and highly incompetent foreigners come to Nigeria and are immediately regarded as ‘expatriates.’ Yet many brainy and exceedingly talented Nigerians are treated with contempt and suspicion at home and abroad. Abroad, they are despised for being Nigerians based on bigoted generalizations about the average Nigerian’s fraudulence and deadliness. At home they are despised for being different and capable of evolving the process that would lead to that progressive and prosperous socio-economic system that we seek.

    If we are to be judged by indigenous mores of morality or what Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, deems the human measure of all things, we shan’t fare excellently well, not by a smidgen. We have fared diffidently for too long; that is why local and international jesters as fragile as clay toys have evolved into outsized heroes and gods, on our watch. To the rest of the world, we are just a bunch of contemptible niggers; still.

  • Birds of a feather

    A CIRCUS show was held in Akure, the Ondo State capital, last week under the guise of a post-National Conference summit. Governor Olusegun Mimiko,  the Southwest Coordinator of President Goodluck Jonathan Campaign, convened the summit. With Mimiko as convener, the agenda of the summit with the  theme : ”2015 elections and Yoruba nation” was obvious. The governor has never hidden the fact that he is for Jonathan.

    As vice chairman of the president’s arm of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), Mimiko is prepared to do anything for Jonathan as long as his own interest  is also protected. Take for instance the NGF election in which  Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi beat his Plateau State counterpart by 19 votes to 16, rather than accept the result, he led others to challenge the result. He was only taking a cue from President Jonathan, who has vowed never to work with Amaechi.

    As the president’s armour bearer, Mimiko has no qualms when it comes to protecting his principal’s interest. Until recently, he was the de facto leader of Labour Party (LP) on which platform he was elected governor. A few months ago, he dumped LP and returned to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His defection sounded the death knell of LP not only in his state, but also nationally. Today, LP is a shell of itself as its national chairman, an ally of Mimiko, has also left the party.

    Since his return to PDP, the party has known no rest in Ondo State because of the tussle for power. Mimiko wants to be the party leader but those he met there are insisting that he cannot just come in and push them aside. The president and the party are with Mimiko even though they are pretending to be for justice and fair play. Mimiko is their man and they will do anything to protect him, including expelling those who may be giving him trouble.

    The time is not ripe for that yet because of the coming elections; so everybody must work together for the president’s victory whether or not they like one another’s face. Mimiko has so far played his cards right. He spoke unequivocally for the postponement of the elections as scheduled for February 14 and 28, claiming that the Independent National Election (INEC) was ill-prepared for the exercise because many eligible voters have not collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

    Having bought time to woo voters for his candidate, he threw in the post-National Conference summit gambit,  bringing Yoruba leaders from across the Southwest not only to jawjaw but also to strategise on how Jonathan can win the March 28 election. Those at the summit were Jonathan’s supporters. Many of them had fallen out back home with their fellow Yoruba leaders over where the race should stand in this dispensation. The Yoruba, which used to unite under a leader, are divided because some people want to reap where they did not sow.

    They have found a common ground under the Jonathan-for-president project, with Mimiko as arrowhead. The post-National Conference summit in Akure should have been aptly tagged: The Mimiko gang in support of Jonathan. Even among the gang, there was initial discord as Afenifere leader Chief Ayo Adebanjo noted that the invitees were majorly PDP chieftains in the Southwest. He said:  “My observation here is that the summit seems to be dominated by the PDP. This is no PDP show because all the PDP candidates are here in the summit. The summit should be more important than a PDP affair. If you are convening something like this  in future give the impression that we are doing it on a nonpartisan basis”.

    Sir, those behind the summit knew what they were doing. They used the confab thing to get people like you to attend. It was a partisan affair called to drum support for Jonathan in next month’s election. If it was to review the report of the National Conference, why would Jonathan’s reelection bid feature prominently on it? Or was that part of the recommendations of the confab? Mimiko, who is serving his last term as governor, is determined to get Jonathan reelected and he is prepared to spend time and money to realise that goal.

    That summit was no summit of Yoruba leaders  but a political jamboree to achieve his aim of getting Jonathan reelected. That, he should know is not a task to be achieved by his own set of Yoruba leaders. The electorate have the exclusive right to elect who they want as president and one million post-National Conference summit of the kind called by Mimiko cannot change this fact.

  • Our tragic elections

    The countries of Black Africa have one nemesis – and that nemesis springs from the fact that members of their political classes (the men and women we call our political leaders) do not understand the true purposes of modern politics, of political parties and of elections. For them all, opposing political parties are armies in perpetual combat, and elections are wars. While preparing for the Nigerian elections of 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo did us the great favour of giving us a name for the war – he named it a “do-or-die affair”. That is it – a do-or-die affair, even if what is likely to die in the process is the country itself. Almost all the hideous crises that African countries have experienced since independence in the 1960s (the inter-ethnic conflicts and the genocidal pogroms) have sprung from the do-or-die wars of elections.

    It would be funny, if it were not so saddening, to watch African political leaders going around asking for votes at election time, speaking volubly to crowds after crowds, proclaiming their loyalty to their country and their country’s progress, and posing as actors in a “democratic” process. It is all a charade. It is almost impossible to find any sincere loyalty to any country in the innermost intentions of these “leaders”. Deep inside the objectives and plans of most groups and leaders, there always reigns a hideous urge to self-aggrandizement and self-perpetuation, and there is often no trace of love of country or people.

    Almost in every country, the intervention of the ethnic factor compounds the tragedy. It makes large populations of innocent and decent folks commit themselves to the political objectives and desires of particular politicians whom they regard as “leaders” of their ethnic nations – or their “tribes” (as the white rulers of Africa taught us to call our nations). Usually, the politician’s deception of “his people”becomes so successful that he can get them, in defence of his interests, to lash out in fury at other nationalities and thereby unleash a murderous war that can sometimes degenerate into a war of all against all.

    But when one examines the actions of those politicians who happen to make it into positions of power, almost all that one would see is self-enrichment and self-perpetuation in power – what our father, Obafemi Awolowo, called “tenacity of office”.  Of loyalty or service of the man in power to his nationality, one would find almost nothing – often totally nothing. Other than employing all the power and resources of the Nigerian presidency to subdue his independent-minded Yoruba people in 2003, what else did President Obasanjo do for his Yoruba nation? Nothing – actually worse than nothing. Our Arewa political leaders are often heard demanding power for the “North”. But after decades of their dominant control of Nigeria’s federal power, how have the masses of the Northern populace benefited? There is much more poverty in the Arewa North today than in 1960.

    Now, some in the South-south cohort around President Jonathan are threatening war, fire and brimstone if Nigerians don’t vote Jonathan back to power; but what has Jonathan done for the well-being of the masses of the people of the South-south in terms of the quality of their lives or their prospects in Nigeria? The people of the South-south have always stood in the fore-front of the fight for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation and for increased local control of resources, so that they may be able to benefit more from the resources of their homeland. In five years as president, what has President Jonathan done to promote these causes? Has he not merely reveled in federal power and wealth and control of wealth?

    In the same vein – though with differences in detail – President Jonathan is posturing today as a friend of the Yoruba people of the South-west, because the massive votes of the South-west appear to be likely to swing the balance in the coming presidential election. Some of the most revered elderly leaders of the Yoruba nation have warmed up to his embrace and are assuring him of Yoruba votes. These are men who have been in the leadership of many Yoruba struggles in Nigeria, and who therefore deserve respect from us their people. But they are our fathers and we may humbly ask them some respectful questions – in the interest of our nation.

    For over five years now, President Jonathan has seemed to be intent on marginalizing the Yoruba in the federal establishment and even in the established civil service, and these fathers of the Yoruba nation have led delegation after delegation to him in Abuja to urge him for a change of direction with respect to the Yoruba nation – to give the Yoruba nation its rightful place as a major nation in Nigeria. It would be a good thing for our fathers to report now to us what definite assurances and undertakings they have obtained from President Jonathan about this all-important matter? Also, there  are complaints galore among our people that President Jonathan seems to enjoy insulting the Yoruba nation – that, in particular, he has, gratuitously, told us again and again that part of our homeland (Lagos) does not belong to us, and that our leaders are “rascals”. Since a strong crop of Yoruba fathers are now close to President Jonathan, how much able are they to give us iron-clad assurances that they will be able to obtain the right level of respect for the Yoruba nation in a Jonathan presidency during Jonathan’s further term,  when he will no longer need any electoral votes?

    Finally, we Yoruba have always made it clear that we are not comfortable with living in a disorderly, poverty-generating and conflict-generating country, and that we would want a proper federation in which we (as well as other Nigerian peoples) could manage our own unique affairs in our own way. We are sure that that is what most Nigerian peoples would want too,  that it cannot possibly hurt the interests of any Nigerian people, and that it offers the only chance of giving the world a stable, harmonious and successful Nigeria.  In particular, we Yoruba people have shown again and again that we reject the presumption by the controllers of federal power that it is their prerogative to determine the outcome of our state and local elections and to choose our state and local rulers for us. Have our fathers who are now friends of President Jonathan obtained assurances and undertakings about these matters from him? Are they asking us to hope that, at least in our part of Nigeria, the forthcoming elections will be free, fair and peaceful?

    The bottom line of all these questions is that, no matter what Nigeria throws at us the Yoruba nation, it is impossible to rob us of our self-respect and love of freedom, or our confidence in our capabilities as a progressive, modernizing and civilizing nation.  We are ready to continue to contribute our efforts to the building of Nigeria; but we demand that Nigeria should stop trying to weaken and paralyze us, and that Nigeria should stop thinking that the Yoruba nation can be led like sheep to the slaughter by anybody – for any purpose whatsoever.

  • All in God’s name

    PASTORS are expected to be god on earth. As spiritual fathers, they are held in high esteem not only by their flock, but also by those in power. Pastors, imams and marabouts et al  have flourished under successive administrations. For each administration, there is a spiritual guardian. Some go for imams; some opt for pastors and yet some prefer marabouts. Their lordship are  treated like royalty. They ride the best of cars; live in posh houses and run a fat bank account. They serve not our Father who art in heaven but the god of money.

    There is nothing some so-called men of God cannot do for money. And there seems to be no better time for them to make money than now when the elections are coming. Knowing that President Goodluck Jonathan desires to return to office, these people have become leeches sucking his blood for all the money they can get all in the name of God. They are telling him sweet stories. Some may even have told him that it has been revealed to them that he will win. Who made the revelation? Their answer, of course, will be God.

    But did God ask them to profit from such prophesy? The scripture says that salvation is free; so why have our men of God become profiteers? Yes, those who serve at the altar must share in what is offered on the altar, but this is not the case with these men of God. They have become the biblical  last days’ prophets, prohesying falsehood to people for money. When Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi said a few weeks ago that some pastors have been given N6billion to support Jonathan’s reelection bid, some sniggered that it was all politics. As things have now shown, he was not politicking.

    It is for real that money exchanged hands between the Presidency and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),  and a cleric, Pastor Kallamu Musa Dikwa, is sticking out his neck to say it. When he first spoke last week, the CAN leadership called him names. But  at a press briefing in Kaduna on Tuesday, Dikwa insisted that CAN ‘s leadership collected N7billion from the Presidency on January 21 and disbursed only N3million to each state branch of CAN. He did not stop there.

    He recalled that in 2013 CAN collected $50,000 from some Nigerians abroad for Boko Haram victims but did not deliver. All what is happening, he quoted some Yobe and Borno states CAN leader as saying “must be corrected”. Yes, it must be corrected by bringing all those involved to justice and Pastor Dikwa should be ready to help in that regard.

  • The African condition

    Several years ago, the late Professor Ali Mazrui the famous Kenyan Professor of History and Political Science gave the annual Reith lectures on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and later published the lectures as a book with the title the African Condition. In it he raised several issues about development, among which were the questions of leadership, mobilization of resources, followership, modernization of infrastructure and international meddlesomeness to mention a few. Since that time nothing has changed and yet there has been 50 years intervening period between then and now. Perhaps the biggest of our problems is that of the ‘big man’ syndrome rather than structures in African politics. What really is the problem of Africa? There is a sense of ennui or of tiredness by the international community about what to do to and for Africa. Almost every development paradigm has been tried without success. We have tried the one party centralised socialist state, we have also tried the interventionist corporations model. These two have failed woefully and we are now privatising and selling the national heirloom to private people sometimes under shady conditions.

    We tried the free enterprise capitalist system, at least in places like Kenya, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Ivory Coast. The result was the same. Short of going back to village democracy and monarchical tyranny we have tried everything. It reminds me of reading Kenneth Post’s seminal book, The Price of Liberty a biography of Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu in which he shows African politics as some kind of retrogression to the pre-colonial times of warlordism. Political parties nowadays have no ideology or manifestoes, and where they have them it is merely for decoration because as soon as government is formed nobody ever makes reference to any party platform.

    Governance is arbitrary, ad hoc episodic with little rhyme or reason. A governor in the case of Nigeria wakes up, talks about “empowering” his people, he flies to China to buy hundreds of motorcycles which he distributes to young people for “transport business”. There is no thought about whether the infrastructure can cope with thousands of motorcyclists driving recklessly without any regard for Highway Code. There is no thought of what this does to agricultural development or the environment. Young people are organised as party thugs to molest those who share different political views with votaries of whatever is the prevailing political orthodoxies of the present.

    Yambo Ouologuem, an academic from Burkina Faso several years ago wrote a book entitled Bound to Violence in which he theorises that the situation in Africa was predestined to violence unless our leaders wake up in time. He has largely been proved right. Of the 54 states in Africa including the violence prone new state of South Sudan, which one can one point to as on a stable path of growth? If the truth must be told there are very few such states. With the exception of South Africa with its highly developed First World infrastructure and economy, virtually all states from the Democratic Republic of the Congo down to the Cape of Good Hope are distressed. Perhaps one can add, Botswana and Namibia to South Africa. Even South Africa under African rule sometimes manifests the almost universal trait of misrule, corruption and ethnic jingoism characteristic of less materially endowed African states north of the Limpopo.

    The DRC has been wracked and wrecked by civil war for almost two decades. Yet this is one of the potentially richest states in the world. There is hardly any solid mineral that is not found in the DRC. The adjoining small states of Rwanda and Burundi vegetated in states of unrestricted genocide for decades until recently when Rwanda operates under Paul Kagame, a rather unstable autocracy whose sorrowful end is predictable. Yet the Hutus and the Tutsis speak the same language. Admitted that in terms of physiognomy one may be able to distinguish one from the other, but should this be the cause for mindless murder?. Uganda is not much better. Their President Museveni has refused to vacate power after almost 40 years. His argument is like that of Charles de Gaulle of  France who said aprés moi: la deluge. Yet the work of government is never done. No one is indispensable. Governments come governments go, the people and the country remain. Uganda in spite of Museveni and perhaps because of him has been in a state of siege for almost as many years as Museveni has been in power. The country is ravaged by the so-called Lord’s Resistance army led by one murderer called Joseph Koni.

    in spite of occasional tribal slaughtering between the dominant Kikuyu and the more sophisticated and educated Luo has not manifested the symptoms of a disappearing state. Tanzania has transited from one democratic ruler to the other, but even there all the moralizing of Julius Nyerere has been replaced by rampant corruption and free for all capitalism. Mozambique after the destruction inflicted by Dlakhama’s RENAMO is beginning to settle down. South Africa somehow provides a safety net for Mozambique. Workers from the wretched country are allowed into South Africa, even though most times, they are met with hostility and police brutality. Botswana and Namibia are for now isolated success stories. Even the two little kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland present different problems. Swaziland is a study in all that is bad in monarchical tyranny. Their young king in his 30s already has as many as 30 queens. He marries queens every year from among virgin girls who are made to gyrate before him in the stadium, while he looks on the one with sturdy boobs and shapely legs fit for royal sexual orgies. Yet this is a country with almost half the population afflicted with HIV virus and full blown AIDS. The king’s wish is the command of the country. With per capita income of about US$300 a year, the young monarch spends his country’s resources on cars and planes and tolerates no opposition.

  • Pa Adebanjo, Fasehun, Odubakin and lesson of history

    Afenifere, the Yoruba political organisation made up of about six Yoruba revered elders,   supported by Frederick Fasehun and Gani Adams of Oodua Peoples Congress, endorsed President Jonathan for another term of four years after six years of less-than-inspiring leadership during a summit recently organized by Olusegun Mimiko in Akure.  They have since tried without success to find justification for their embarrassing action. They have deployed message of fear and hatred and sometimes turning logic on its head, all in attempt to salvage what is left of their hard earned reputation.

    Afenifere’s national publicity secretary, in an interview with The Punch last Sunday, told Nigerians that “Leaders of Afenifere and Oodua Peoples Congress endorsed Jonathan because he promised to implement the report of the Confab”. Asked what he would do if Jonathan reneged on his promise to implement the confab report, he says  ‘When he met with us in Akure, he told us categorically that he would implement the confab report within the 12 months of his return to office.  He gave reasons why he traded in Buhari whom he worked for during the 2011 election for Jonathan: “The characters around him today are not the same in 2011”; there is ‘no difference between APC and PDP’; ‘APC governors like PDP governors are corrupt’. Probably realizing he has been unable to even convince himself let alone his critics, he added ‘those who shout ‘change’ today are political merchants”.

    Fasehun’s justification was scandalous. According to him, “Some people said they were born to rule”; and for that reason, he says, “Jonathan is the only good thing available to Nigeria and it is either Jonathan or nothing.” Fasehun’s appeal to Yoruba people not to vote Buhari because ‘‘Some people said they were born to rule”. has finally exposed the hypocrisy of a man who has always said he was promoting national unity and cohesion.  Fasehun about two years ago made elaborate show of accompanying Major Mustapha, Abacha’s chief security officer who was also claimed to be the head of his killer squad, to Kano following his discharge by the court at the behest of the Jonathan administration. (Obasanjo made reference to those who gave state support to secure freedom for alleged master mind of many assassinations during the Abacha brutal regime)

    Pa Adebanjo’s reasons are no less nebulous and ill-defined. He says for instance “We are supporting Jonathan because of consistency of the Yoruba people to have this country restructured so that it can develop”. He then vaguely added “voting Buhari/Osinbajo ticket “is a mistake Nigeria cannot afford” because Jonathan is committed to implementing the recommendation of the confab report”. He then went on to add: “once General Muhammadu Buhari becomes President, the Yoruba people should prepare for another era of setbacks and sufferings.” Lacking in rhyme and logic, Pa Adebanjo then decided to drop the magic name: “If we fail to achieve this, I don’t know how Papa Obafemi Awolowo will be feeling in his grave.”

    But I can hazard a guess for our ever coherent Pa Adebanjo who, weighed down by his own contradictions has suddenly become incoherent. Awo watching from his grave would feel betrayed by the pettiness of those who swear by his name but who today promote the likes of Ayo Fayose and Olusegun Mimiko who behaves like a wife with five husbands as role models for our children.

    Both Pa Ayo Adebanjo and Olusegun Mimiko who decided to rake up the confab report submitted since last July on the eve of election know that both Yoruba submissions on parliamentary system and regionalism were roundly defeated at the confab. They are aware no item described as ‘restructuring’ can be found among the 600 resolutions contained in the report. Besides it is obvious President Jonathan was not interested in the report. After all, there are items which will not require constitutional amendments which could have been treated as policy implementations if President Jonathan was truly committed to the confab.

    In any case, except Pa Adebanjo, Femi Okunroumu, Yinka Odumakin and Mimiko their newly installed Yoruba leader, the Yoruba know President Jonathan who subverted his party constitution in order to become president and dismissed Obasanjo who had aided him in the subversion as a ‘motor park tout’ when he was reminded of his solemn undertaking to spend six years, cannot keep promises. Mimiko who is also on record as having at different periods dumped AD for PDP, PDP for Labour; hobnobbed with Asiwaju Tinubu’s AC to secure his stolen mandate by PDP; and as  Labour governor, he sided with PDP ‘governors without character’, to publicly proclaim 16 greater than 19 following a Nigerian Governors Forum election lost by President Jonathan’s preferred candidate and who has once again now dumped the Labour party to become the chief  promoter of Jonathan in Yoruba nation as part of his strategy to remain relevant after his second term in office. He is a leader who doesn’t believe in anything.

    Adebanjo says “once General Muhammadu Buhari becomes President, the Yoruba people should prepare for another era of setbacks and sufferings.”  He is not worried the ‘era of setbacks and sufferings’ that has been in place in the last 16 years will not suddenly disappear with the re-election of President Jonathan. And because of his petty ego war with his political son, Bola Tinubu, he has decided to work against Buhari/Osibanjo victory and the prospect that such a victory will for the first time in our nation’s history  allow the main- stream Yoruba political tendency to participate in governance of the country. Pa Adebanjo was ready to throw away the baby with the bath-water.

    Playing the Abuja script, Femi Okunrounmu, read a statement purportedly on behalf of the Yoruba, threatening fire and brimstone if the election date was not shifted. No sooner than that was achieved than Mimiko, a master of political intrigue organized a summit of Yoruba to talk about a dead confab report. Jonathan followed up with a visit to the West where he allegedly dispensed favours and patronage in cash and kind ranging from dollars and influence to satisfy the heart desires of everyone who subscribed to Mimiko’s brand of leadership which is not only strange to Yoruba people but equally alien to proud Ondo people who are not known to call a spade by any other name other than its name.

    Today in the West, we have the reincarnation of the forces at play in the First Republic – men who operate without scruples and who while advancing their personal interests pretend to fight the Yoruba cause. As we move towards March 28 election, the Yoruba youths like their counterparts elsewhere in the country must reject hate messages of leaders who use the name of the masses to seek relevance.  It is tragic that the same forces at play today have been the same all through Nigeria’s history. A small clique of parasites from the north, east and west who falsely swear by the name of the people to advance their selfish interests.

  • Nigerian military is being dragged into politics again

    Sixteen years after the forced withdrawal of the Nigerian military from power and the return to civilian democratic rule in the country, the nation is living in the shadows of the military again. Under his watch, President Jonathan’s weak and blundering PDP federal government is dragging the Nigerian military willy-nilly into partisan politics again. The presidential election which should have been held on February 14, two weeks ago, was postponed at the behest of the Nigerian Military High Command, barely a week before the due dates. The APC had run a strong and convincing electoral campaign and was heading towards victory if the elections were held on February14. President Jonathan resorted to the military to delay the elections to avoid his defeat. But delaying the elections for six weeks will not buy President Jonathan the time he needs to win. It will not alter his appalling record in office. And this Gestapo method is unacceptable.

    But the effort to delay the elections actually began at his Chatham House lecture in London when the National Security Adviser, retired Colonel Sambo Dansuki, a scion of the Sokoto caliphate, told his bemused British audience that the date for the elections, set a year ago, might have to be changed because of the delay in the distribution and collection of the voters’ cards (PVC). There was no reference by him then to any security concerns. As at that date, two or three weeks before the elections, over 60 per cent of the voters’ cards had in fact been collected, with the certainty that more cards would be collected in the intervening period. The idea that all potential voters will collect their voters’ cards is not practical, given the existing voters’ apathy over the elections. In fact, less than half of those who are eligible to vote in Nigeria have usually exercised that right. It is highly unlikely that more than 70 per cent of those registered to vote will actually collect their cards.

    That such a critical proposal regarding a change in dates for the elections should have been made by Col. Dansuki who, in his capacity as National Security Adviser, should have nothing to do with the electoral process, is disturbing and improper. That this suggestion was made abroad, and not in Nigeria, was ominous. It was meant to appease the international community, and not Nigerians to whom the government owed an explanation for the proposal to change the dates of the elections to suit President Jonathan, the PDP presidential candidate. The proposal met with strong opposition both in Nigeria and abroad. The American Secretary of State, John Kerry, had been dispatched to Abuja to advice the federal government against any change in dates. Such a delicate matter involving the suggestion for a change of date could not have been made without the imprimatur and authority of President Jonathan and his ruling PDP. Dasuki merely flew the kite and it was overwhelmingly rejected at home and abroad

    The proposal for a change of date on alleged grounds of security concerns was turned down by the National Council of States at its Abuja meeting, at which Jega, the chairman of the Electoral Commission (INEC), also announced that he and his Commission were ready for the elections and did not consider a change in dates necessary, or even desirable, for whatever reason. In fact, he claimed then that his Commission was better prepared to hold the elections on the due dates than in 2011.  To get around this procedural difficulty and secure a delay in the date of the elections, President Jonathan got his Army High Command to send a letter to INEC that the Nigerian military could not, on security grounds, guarantee the dates proposed, and that in the intervening period, it was intensifying its attack on Boko Haram.  The real reason for the change of dates is that President Jonathan needed more time to intensify his faltering campaign. As former president Obasanjo had warned the nation, winning the elections had become a ‘do or die’ affair for the president and his PDP. But getting the military to veto the dates of the elections is not in the national interest. It has created a bad precedent that the military can easily use in future.

    Nigeria has an Army of nearly 200,000 men, out of which it has deployed less than a division against the raging insurgency in the North East. How come it cannot secure the elections with the remaining troops? In any case, the primary responsibility for maintaining law and order at all times internally rests with the Police, and not the Army. Throughout this entire crisis, President Jonathan has kept mute about the source of the military demarche on the electoral commission. President Jonathan is trying to hide behind a finger, but no one is deceived that the voice is Esau’s and the hand Jacob’s. He has put the Military High Commission in an invidious and embarrassing situation by prompting its intervention in the electoral process, a move that is plainly unconstitutional and improper. If he had wanted the elections held on the original dates he, as Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces, should simply have issued the necessary orders for the Armed Forces to provide the necessary security logistics for the elections to be held on the original dates proposed. In any case, the security role of the armed forces in the elections is limited both by law and the Constitution. A recent judgment in the Appellate Court has ruled emphatically that the Armed Forces cannot, under whatever guise, be deployed for the purpose of advancing, or promoting, the electoral fortunes of one party or the other. What this means in plain terms is that the armed forces cannot legally be deployed to intimidate, harass, or victimize the supporters of one political party, or the other, and that in discharging its limited role during elections, it should be professional, and politically neutral in the electoral process.

    We now have incontrovertible evidence in the ‘Sagir case’ of the role played by some agents of the Armed Forces in the Ekiti state elections in which Governor Fayemi of the APC was fraudulently denied victory through the subversive manipulation of the electoral process by military and civilian agents of the PDP in the elections. In the Osun state elections, the use of hooded and armed men, as well as direct and indirect intervention by military agents of the PDP, almost led to the defeat of Governor Aregbesola of the APC. There is also some evidence that in his ‘do or die’ presidential elections of 2003, President Obasanjo, who is now shouting himself hoarse from the roof tops against the PDP strategy of winning the elections by hook or crook, made use of the security agencies to subvert the electoral process by offering them massive bribes to ensure the electoral victory of the PDP in the South West states in which the AD held sway. Only Lagos successfully resisted Obasanjo’s massive electoral fraud in those elections.

    Now, as we should by now have learnt from our post independence electoral experience, encouraging the Armed Forces to intervene in the electoral process is fraught with grave dangers and severe consequences. It is a wanton subversion of democracy and the electoral process. From 1962 to 1965 when the AG government of the former Western region was plunged into a constitutional crisis, the Balewa federal coalition government had used the armed forces to suppress the civil rebellion against the unpopular Akintola/Fani-Kayode NNDP government in the region. Relying on the Army, both Akintola and Fani-Kayode bragged that, whether or not the electorate voted for them, they would be declared the winner of the election. They were so declared, but strong and swift public reaction against the bizarre results declared led to the January, 1966, military coup d’etat in which Akintola lost his life. Fani- Kayode was brought to Lagos by the coup planners and was to have been eliminated, but was spared by then Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, who personally secured his release. Gowon led a battalion of troops loyal to the federal government. In fact, as revealed by then Lt. Col. Hilary Njoku in his book ’A Tragedy without heroes’ on the January, 1966, coup, there were two coups being planned; one by the Brigadiers, and the other by the Majors. The Balewa federal government had grown so weak, so badly divided, so chaotic, and so feckless that it could no longer survive without the support of an Army that had, itself, become so badly divided, partisan and professionally rudderless. In the ensuing civil war six million Nigerians, most of them civilians, died.

    This tragic scenario is being replayed now with the faltering PDP federal government leaning increasingly on the Nigerian Armed Forces to apply its dirty electoral tricks to maintain its hold on power. This is subversive of the electoral process and Nigeria’s fledgling democracy. President Jonathan has said there will be no further shifts in the dates of the elections. He must be held to his public assurances and stop dragging the Armed Forces illegally into the electoral process.

  • Some wonderful class narrative

    The democracy we declared has recoiled into a spent shadow. Sixteen years on in the grip of blood-drenched mascots, it steals from our sweetest fantasies like the proverbial slut making a surreptitious exit with her drunken lover’s wallet.

    Consequently, we suffer poverty in character that manifests as mean-spiritedness. It’s akin to that patience of the wild that holds motionless for endless hours the motorist at the police checkpoint, the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the public officer on his perch – this patience belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey.

    Oftentimes, it manifests in uncontrollable spasms that have seen us bury our best and elevate our worst in abject negation of the cycle of the universe and morality. But who needs morals in a nation where fair is foul and foul remains fair?

    As you read, many a Nigerian of commonplace roots live through each day without ever contemplating or criticizing their living conditions. They find themselves born into dehumanising squalor or somewhat indecent circumstances and they accept such sordidness as their fate thus exhibiting no conscious effort to better their lot beyond what their immediate circumstances dictate.

    Almost as impulsively as the beasts of the wild, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought and consideration that by sufficient endeavor, they just might improve their living conditions. However, a certain percentage – comprising men and women of privilege – guided by personal ambition, consciously strive in thought and will to attain higher status but very few among these are concerned enough to secure for all, the advantages which they seek for themselves. This explains the number of self-centred and treacherous human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists and columnists parading our streets.

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

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

    This is because more unfortunate sections of the Nigerian population are hopelessly ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and disillusionment, apprehensive through the imminent danger of instantaneous chastisement by the holders of power, and morally defective owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation. To excite among such classes any conscious, deliberate effort in pursuit of general improvement of the status quo proves basically a hopeless task, as antecedents of such efforts have proven.

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

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

    What exactly has democracy offered? A 4-1-9 progressive plan that booms circumspectly like it had been doctored as part of a cold-war era propagandist scheme? But despite our self-righteousness and persistent cynicism with the current order, we really cannot explore a more worthy alternative than what we have now. The average Nigerian can’t bear to be led by a truly honest, visionary and accountable leadership. That explains our choice of the incumbent leadership.

    Apparently, we possess an overwhelming and oft-convincing inclination to self-destruct thus our lack of a coherent and defensible political ideology essential to the evolution of a progressive leadership and state.

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

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

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

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be tirelessly reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advance — problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life – and all these and other inevitable problems of civilization must be resolvable largely by an average member of the working class by reason of his exposure and constitution.

    This informs a greater need for study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of past and current mistakes in the journey towards the reduction to the barest minimum, the possibility of future foibles. The answer to Nigeria’s widening income and social gap – which has so far manifested in preventable crises and persistent state of insecurity – is to found an educational process geared to steer successfully, the commonplace trains of thought away from the dilettante and the fool stereotype.

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

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

    Hence they would be able to understand that the much clamoured social enterprise and gesture towards change must be mooted and achieved by the working class itself in further substantiation of the working class’ capacities to assimilate the culture and refinement of humane civilization; a veritable step towards such reality is to vote the incumbent administration out of office

    • To be continued…

  • The fall and fall of the Naira

    In 1973 when the Yakubu Gowon post-civil war government introduced the Naira, it was at par with the West African currency board pound  sterling that we were then using along with The Gambia and Sierra Leone. Ghana as an independent country under  Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had withdrawn from the West African common currency in 1957. This was one of the regrettable but understandable decisions of Nkrumah to assert his country’s independence and new status but which from privilege of hindsight set West African economic integration years back. The pound sterling we were using until 1973 when we changed to the Naira was at par with the British pound. The result was that there was no reason in the world for Nigerians to have foreign accounts as a hedge against the fluctuating local currency. But how things have changed . The increase in national revenue following stupendous growth of the oil industry after the civil war  in 1970 guaranteed the strength of the Naira. Even though there was corruption in the Yakubu Gowon admnistration, it did not reach the current prevailing  epidemic, endemic and industrial level of today.

    For years after the introduction of the Naira, it remained stable  to the extent that the mad drive to have foreign money by Nigerians was not there. I remember when I was Director of the National Universities Commission’s  office respectively in Ottawa, Canada and later in Washington DC in the United States from 1978 to 1982, I refused to take my salaries in dollars because there was no advantage or benefit from availing myself of that opportunity. I was merely living on my foreign service allowance. The point I am making is that the Naira remained strong and respectable and convertible. I remember that while recruiting Americans and Canadians for our then new universities in Jos, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Benin, Sokoto, Bayero Kano, Ilorin, Yola and Bauchi, we used to just multiply the Naira salaries paid to Nigerian professors by two to get the American equivalent. In other words, one Naira converted to two American dollars. A professor in Nigerian universities then earned N16,000 per annum which was respectable US$32,000.

    The national currency of a country is a symbol of a country’s power and pride. When as in post-First World War Germany, the Reichmarks became worthless as a result of Germany’s humiliating Versailles diktat, it led directly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and his determined campaign of righting the wrong of Versailles. We are in this country reaching a point where the national currency is becoming an embarrassment and a symbol of our current weakness in the face of internal and external challenges to our sovereignty.

    I remember the  late 1980s when after ruining the country, the Shagari regime was overthrown because of its  spendthrift nature and uncontrolled corruption,  the Naira began its downward spiral. When Babangida took over government from the duo of the no-nonsense Idiagbon and Buhari, the International  Monetary Fund moved in with its one-remedy-fits-all policy of structural adjustment programme which the Buhari regime had refused. It was during the Babangida regime that the exposed nature of Nigeria’s economy became apparent. Babangida  was forced first to float the Naira which was then changing at four Naira to a dollar when he took over government. I remember the personal financial loss I suffered when in 1991, I left Nigeria to assume duty as ambassador in Germany, my savings suffered a depreciation of almost 100 percent. The Naira by 1991 was changing at 10 to a dollar and by the time the Structural Adjustment programme imposed on the country had run its full course, the economy of the country had been destroyed and with it the middle class had been wiped out. Those who had money before were then reduced to penury and there began the fashion of owning foreign accounts against the future. If the situation were stable this would have been totally unnecessary because in most cases these accounts earn little or no interest at all. From this period  onwards, the Naira continued to reflect the inherent weakness not just of the Nigerian economy, but of the Nigerian state itself.

    The use of the American dollar as a reserve currency in the world is a symbol of American hegemony in the world, a hegemony  that has made the last century the American century. The Chinese Yuan may in course of time and all things being equal rise to the same prominence in the world’s economic medium of exchange. There was a time in the 1970s when the naira was acceptable all over West Africa and also in the bazaars of Sheperd Bush in London! Gone are those days when Nigeria, victorious from a civil war and loaded with wealth was not only helping Africa’s fighting forces of colonialism in Southern Africa, but was also dispensing monetary largesse in the West Indies. We can only remember those halcyon years with nostalgia.

    The precipitous fall of the naira is always during the time of crisis at home when those who feel they may lose out in the struggle for power resort to carrying their loot abroad and therefore were ready to change their unearned income to foreign currency at any available rate. This phenomenon is not unique to Nigeria; it is simply a manifestation of under development. This is why black or parallel markets of currency exchange are only found in underdeveloped economies.

    We have now more or less reached a point of no return in the destruction of the national currency when it crossed the 200 to a dollar mark. It is not just because the price of oil has fallen, serious as this is, it is because of total mismanagement of the economy by the so-called expert from the World Bank whose contribution in a time of plenty was publishing what states and local government earned as if this was neuro science! This so-called World Bank expert continued telling her employers in Abuja what sacrifice she was making without telling them the benefits that were accruing to her. Now, the chicken has come home to roost and it is dead silence from the guru of World Bank who has now ensured that we  are again prostrate for another Bretton Woods institutions treatment. This World Bank Trojan horse has delivered.

    If we survive the current economic and political problems, we will again be dictated to by outsiders masquerading as dogooders on the way  out of the woods and we may by then be so economically weak that we we would have no choice than to bite the bullet. It is then that social Armageddon may be visited on this country and saints and sinners may be swept away in the blind fury of people’s uncontrolled anger. We may yet avoid this if we defend the naira through disciplined management of our foreign trade. We are importing too many things we do not need. Why are we importing all these wines one sees in every corner of our our country? Why are we the second largest consumer of champagne in the world outside France? Why do we allow our plutocrats to indulge themselves in buying planes and we are boasting that it is a sign of how big our economy is? This shows complete disconnect between us and our rulers. We can half our import bill, encourage local production of rice and substitute wheat with other cereals and generally assist  efforts of imports substitution and local industrialization. The result of this will be reduction of our need for foreign exchange and even at current earnings, we would have surplus and be able to defend the naira at a respectable exchange rate. If and when we transit to a much more disciplined regime with no tolerance for rampant corruption,  we should have a currency that reflects our aspiration as a medium power in the world  and  one that is dominant in our continent.