The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Kemi Badenoch and her father’s ‘Voice of Reason’

    Kemi Badenoch and her father’s ‘Voice of Reason’

    Kemi Badenoch, Britain’s Leader of Conservative Party and the Leader of Opposition, has gone through severe stress and strain since she first described Nigeria as a country plagued by “fear, insecurity, and corruption”, while reflecting on challenges of growing up in Lagos. She was accused of the denigrating the country of her parents.  Not even David Cameron who back in 2016 described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt country” received the type of criticism that trailed what some considered as an unpatriotic assault on Nigeria.

    But if Badenoch, whose brand of ‘saying it like it is’ and promises to tell ‘hard truths about her country’ does not feel intimidated by a section of the British press who described her as “ever-out-raged Kemi” and a “passionate defender of free speech – apart from any criticism of her” (John Crace Feb 19), she is not going to be cowed by some self-proclaiming patriots, Nigerian journalists whose tantrums include describing her as one “who gets banana brain with bad parents without home training”; outbursts  that will have no effect on her future electoral fortune.

    But more unrestrained attack has since followed her declaration during an interview with the Spectator two weeks back that she identifies more with the Yoruba group than the people from northern Nigeria. This is the natural order of things. Our first allegiance is to our families through whom we acquire through a process called political socialization, the process by which the norms and values of our tribe that “are associated with performance of political roles and values guiding standards of political behaviours are learnt mainly through parents.

    “A man is born into his political party just as he is born into his probable future membership of in the church of his parents”. (Babawale 1999). We will see how this played out with Badenoch shortly.

    Tragically, most of our politicians who are below 65 years of age who at best can be described as ‘new breed’ politicians’  who have been misled by their military role models that one can be a Nigerian first without first being a good family man or a good representative of his people. And sadly, it is futile preaching to the converted in view of empirical evidences all around us.

    We have Chief Obasanjo who, after deriding his people by boasting he would rather be a Nigerian leader than a Yoruba leader, went on to become a military Head of State and two-term elected president with little or no contribution from his people beyond ensuring he lost at his ward and polling unit.

    We have General Theophilus Danjuma, Nigeria foremost philanthropist who spends money like water on account of having secured an oil well because he is first a Nigerian.  We have David Mark, who as a self-proclaiming Nigerian was in the senate for close to 20 years despite being a sworn enemy of those who fought and died for democracy in 1993. 

    Of course, there are scores of other Nigerian billionaires who made their fortune from the state because in Nigeria, it is literally possible to climb the palm tree from the top.

    But these aberrations should not make us become ashamed of our tribes. Since in the real world, studies have shown that you cannot love Nigeria without first loving your family or by first becoming a good representative of your people, no Nigerian should be ashamed to see herself or himself as a proud Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Ijaw, Urhobo, Ibibio, Munchi etc. man or woman.

    Kemi Badenoch who identifies herself as a proud Yoruba woman, by virtue of her political socialization, is a chip of the old block. She is a thorough daughter of her father Olufemi Adegoke, a medical doctor who, before his death two years back, was unarguably a good Nigerian despite his life-long struggle like most of his Yoruba compatriots, in the forefront of returning Nigeria to the abandoned path to freedom through restructuring.

    Badenoch’s ‘Voice of Reason’ (VOR) is a grouping of eminent Nigerians of Yoruba descent, who is accomplished professionals, academicians, entrepreneurs, business men and women and persons with private and public service experience

    The over-arching objective of VOR is the enthronement of a regime, or structure and culture of developmentally-oriented values and conduct of leadership, followership and governance of Yoruba land and specifically within a broader framework of Nigeria’s unity and all-round national development.

    VOR’s objective  include working for a new, equitable and efficient structure of governance in Nigeria; putting pressure on the central government to take appropriate steps towards meeting  the earnest yearnings of majority of Yoruba people for a restructuring of Nigeria; and impressing it on the central government that restructuring is the best and most peaceful path to national harmony and nation-building; enhancing the quality of stewardship, accountability, human asset development and mass wealth creation dynamic in the southwest geo political zone.

    VOR members committed themselves to keeping VOR strictly non-partisan.

    VOR argument for restructuring was anchored on the understanding among people of Nigeria and the departing colonial authority at independence and after independence that “the regions represented a group of people who had long standing affinities based on ethnic, linguistic, economic and through relationships.

    Kemi Badenoch’s father-led VOR believes for development to take place, we must first have a country and to have a country, the national question must be resolved. From the views of Yoruba leading light and those of the leaders of other Nigerian ethnic nationalities, there appears to be unanimity of purpose on issue of restructuring, in spite of their different political orientations. The followings attestations seem to confirm this:

    Lack of restructuring “is the cause of secessionist’s agitation – (Prof Banji Akinoye, Emeritus professor of history and prominent Yoruba leader).

    Restructuring will give sovereignty to states on education health, mineral resources (John Nwodo former president of Ohaneze).

    Break the myth of leadership in Nigeria. Give us a true fiscal federal constitution by the people and for the people and watch this land thrive in great leadership…This centralized governing system is all about the rule of men. Give us the rule of law, to be enshrined in the people’s constitution where no saint or devil is above the law (Prince Olagoke Omisore, The Conveners of Voice of Reason 2014).

    The current federal structure is unbalanced, unfair, over-centralised and therefore unstable. We firmly support the demand to restructure the federation with appropriate devolution of powers to the federating units and a commensurate revenue allocation formula” – (Prof Jerry Gana, national president, Middle Belt Forum).

    As presently constituted, it is unwieldy and a contraption for annihilation of the Middle Belt, our cultures and aspirations – (Dr Bitris Pogu)

    Restructuring must not be seen as a demand for a previously unknown Nigeria. What we demand is a return to a Nigeria we have had before, a Nigeria that worked for human progress and development – (Obong Victor Atta).

    “I am all ears to hear how the people will convince the powers-that-be on restructuring. Change begins with restructuring – (Alfred-Diete-Spiff ((Amayanabo of Twon-Brass and first governor of Rivers 1966-1976).

    “If rapid political progress is to be made in Nigeria, it is high time we were realistic about its constitutional problems; Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same sense as there are ‘English, Welsh or French. The word Nigerian is a mere geographical expression to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not” – Chief Obafemi Awolowo in Path to Nigeria Freedom (London, Faber and Faber 1947) p 478.

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    “What Nigeria needs is a change that will make politics less attractive, make each state to develop at its own pace and do away with all shades and shapes of criminality – Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, founder of Afe Babablola University.

    There is an urgent need to restructure and reconfigure the country in a way that would suit all sections of the country – (Prof Wole Soyinka Nobel Laureate).

    We should adopt a restructured true federalism which I believe will provide the best basis for the realization of the Nigerian nation that we all desire, a stable, united and socio-economically fast developing country with a correspondingly accountable and citizen-empathetic leadership – (Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General).

    The constitution of this country must be restructured towards true federalism. If it is not restructured, there will be no room for development. A country must exist before development. This country cannot exist without restructuring” – (Chief Ayo Adebanjo Afenifere leader).

    “I hope to live to see the day in a properly federalized and restructured Nigeria, the return of the groundnut and cotton pyramids to Kano wrapped with colourful hides and skin, huge cocoa plantations to the west, the palm oil and kernel industry to the east and the appearance of yam skyscrapers in Makurdi, Gboko and Jalingo” – General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, civil war veteran.

    For close to 60 years we have groped in the wilderness.

    Voice of Reason (VOR), believing all the above Nigerian stakeholders cannot all be wrong, is today making a case for a return to the path to the Nigerian freedom we abandoned in 1966.

  • Let’s nurse minds, not social cannibals

    Let’s nurse minds, not social cannibals

    Nigerians are a curious breed. Think of us as the proverbial coastal dwellers dying of thirst. We complain of parched tongues, but every day, we defecate in our fresh springs and struggle to slake our thirst with poisonous waters from abroad.

    Beyond metaphor, Nigeria must be rescued from cognitive dissonance; the mental racket that triggers the Nigerian lust to relocate abroad and sustains it.

    Ultimately, it poisons our wellsprings of civilisation and knowledge: culture, family and academia. This corruptive mentality pervades the country’s educational and cultural institutions, aggravating the brain drain that robs Nigeria of the allegiance and contributions of promising citizenry.

    The multiple failures that beset the country, from the bungled economy to our subversive partisanship, to our lack of universal health care, to protracted terrorism, and the neocolonialist afflictions of our politics and media, can be adduced to the institutions that produce and sustain our political elite.

    Our local schools and even the elite schools most Nigerians throng abroad, hardly teach students to question and think. They focus instead on creating legions of effective systems managers via standardised tests and passive submission to authority.

    Eventually, when the systems fail the managers, they scurry out of the country in search of greener pastures abroad. When the going gets tough, they simply pack up and leave.

    The responsibility for the collapse of the Nigerian economy runs from the corridors of power, through the media soapbox to the lecture theatres of the academia; it pervades our banking halls, the comatose industry and the random trade zones of municipal sidewalks.

    Scholarship is crucial to the rejuvenation of our comatose state thus Nigeria must furnish an educational system that facilitates fearless intellectual inquiry; one that is constructively critical of authority, fiercely independent, and selfless.

    We must quit organising learning around minutely specialised disciplines, tapered solutions, and rigid structures designed to produce predetermined answers. As the government fixates on science education, it must equally furnish our arts and humanities.

    Nigeria must rejig her cultural foundations and ethical complex – and this is achievable through a partnership between the government and the arts & humanities. The result of such an endeavour would excite a social re-engineering built on character mending and economic restoration in consonance with our peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

    Restoring our cultural dominance would facilitate easier salvage of our society, particularly the engine wheels of our industrial complex. China, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, among others, attained progress by founding their governance on a cultural experience indigenous to them.

    The wild pursuit of materialism renders large segments of our business and political elite addicted to mindless acquisition of ill-gotten wealth. Thus the ceaseless cases of corruption in public office. The lives of several culprits are funded by stolen money and beastly monopolies facilitated by heinous social and political contracts.

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    On the flip side of the equation, the working class diminishes and struggles to maintain membership in the informal social caste imposed upon it by a raptorial ruling class.

    The general run of the masses supposedly dissents but many do so without any real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. Plato’s allegory of the cave was meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.

    For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train someone to manage a business account for Price Water Cooper, for instance, is to educate him or her in skill. To train them to debate the ethics of a business venture is to educate them on values and morals. A culture that disregards the vital interplay between morality and power, writes Hedges, condemns itself to death.

    Such existential truths are scorned by the modern fortune hunter. And the disconnect subsists across professions, government, and academia. Nigerian economists, for instance, chant elaborate theoretical models yet know little of how their fancy, soulless economics impact rural poetry and suburban lives.

    Our educational and social systems must quit churning out such products of a cultural void, casualties of a system that produces graduates who have been taught to cheat the system and applaud theft as a shrewd corporate strategy.

    The true purpose of education must be to make minds, not social cannibals. Education must furnish us with patriots capable of leading Nigeria’s charge back to rebirth.

    A recourse to educational foundations, in the light of Arnold’s 1869 treatise, could be in Nigeria’s best interest. This is attainable by conscious endeavour. President Bola Tinubu could lay the foundation for such a monument by increasing Nigeria’s education budget to 18 per cent or thereabouts, from the disgraceful fraction – usually less than seven per cent – budgeted over the years.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advancement: problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life.

    Our quest for effective public governance can only be realised through the guidance of skilled thinkers, and a synergy between a public service that works and a humane corporate business sector.

    Nigeria could take a cue from Finland’s educational system. The transformation of the Finnish education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan. Educators had little idea it was so successful until 2000, when the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardised test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world.

    Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science. In the 2009 PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide.

    There are no mandated standardised tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. School managers at all levels are educators, not businessmen or politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators.

    The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education irrespective of his or her descent. The differences between the weakest and strongest students in Finland are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

    True knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of truth, hope, superior culture and progress. It is never simply to teach bread-winning, furnish teachers for the public schools or vocation for the unemployed. It should above all, be an appendage of that fine adjustment between what Du Bois calls reality and the flourishing knowledge of life – an improvement of civilisation and a solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

    The end product of such an educational process would be less likely to abscond in the face of odds because he or she must have learnt to courageously vie for truth and progress, not for vulgar repute or profit.

  • Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    The collapse of the Bashar Hafez dictatorship in Syria and the overthrow of the 53 year old Hafez al- Assad Alawite minority regime in Syria has come without any sympathy and with much relief and welcome in the international community and the Arab world. Bashar Al Hafez succeeded his father Hafez al – Assad (1930- 2000) in 2000 after his death. He was not supposed to be a ruler. He was training as a specialist ophthalmologist in London when he was recalled to take the mantle of leadership after the accidental death of his older brother who had been trained and primed to succeed his father.

    The elder Hafez was a politician and one of the supporters of the Syrian wing of the Ba’ath party and also a military officer as was characteristic of the Arab world. Historically, Syria has had a chequered trajectory, beginning as part of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War and ending as a mandate of the League of Nations assigned to France after the war. The territory was a hotchpotch of different groups namely of the Druze, Alawite, people of Aleppo and those of Damascus who were organised independently of each other. Opposition to French rule seemed to have brought some unity which was expressed in armed rebellion periodically from 1920 after King Faisal Hussein abdicated the throne to pave the way to the time of the French mandate.

    The period of fragile French control spanned the period 1920 to 1945 when the Free French forces finally withdrew from Syria after sporadic fighting to pave way for the Syrian Republic which staggered on until 1971 iron and brutal rule of Hafez al-Assad provided some disciplined order under the Ba’ath party. The Ba’ath party was founded on April 7, 1947 as the Arab Ba’ath party by  Michel Aflaq, an Orthodox Christian, Salah al -Din-al Bitar, a Sunni Muslim, and the followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi, an Alawite (a small sect of the Shi’a) who later became an atheist in Damascus. This party’s ideology was based on social justice and the unity of all Arab countries and it had branches in all Arab countries but with the branches in Syria and Iraq being the most formidable.

    Ba’athism enunciated some form of socialism or Arab socialism as they called it. It was secular in nature and wanted state control of all resources particularly land for the benefit of the Arab masses. It also wanted the distribution of land to the peasants against the then prevailing monopoly and ownership by monarchs and religious bodies. It preached some form of populism which made the party very attractive to the Arab masses. It also wanted the unity of all Arab lands and its motto was “Unity, Liberty, Socialism”. The party ruled Syria at least in name from the coup of 1963 to the fall of Bashar al-Hafez. Initially the party meant well before it became a dictatorship of a few military politicians climaxing in the Hafez Al-Assad seizure of power in 1971 to the hurried fleeing in the night by his son Bashar after 24 years of disastrous rule during which the ancient country of very rich culture was destroyed and close to one million of its people were slaughtered in a fratricidal war which lasted for 14 years leading to mass exodus of millions of its people to Lebanon, Turkey , Jordan  Germany and many other countries in Europe and the Americas . Apart from Bashar Hafez, his backers in Iran, Russia and the Hezbollah in Lebanon were largely responsible for one of the cruellest slaughter of a people whose offence was asking to be free.

    The country became a protectorate of Russia which had a large air force base few miles from the coastal town of Jableh. Russia also has a large naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast which the Kremlin considers most strategically necessary if Russia is to continue to be seriously considered a global naval power. Iran, the other military power supporting the Assad regime does not have a base in Syria but maintained command and control presence in Syrian high command necessary to conduct operations within Syria using largely Hezbollah forces. Syria was the strongest eastern wing of the forces of resistance against western and Israeli intervention in Arab land and the larger world of Islam and the unfortunate Palestinians were used mostly as cannon fodder.

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    The collapse of Syria has completely exposed the Iranian and Russian flanks in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey which harboured about three million Syrian refugees had always had troops in northern Syria to keep in check Syrian Kurds that Turkey considered terrorists interested in joining Iraqi, Turkish and possibly Iranian Kurds in creating an independent Great Kurdistan. There were also a few American troops monitoring the presence of adherents of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria. This was the situation in Syria while Bashar was in power in Damascus.

    On December 8, a major offensive against Bashar al Assad, president of Syria was launched by opposition forces led by Abu Mohamed al-Julani, head of the group known as Tahrir al-Sham, a group that had been named a terrorist group by American government and its allies and supported by mainly Turkish forces and some renegade Syrian forces against Damascus after previously capturing Aleppo, the second most important town in the country and overrunning other towns on the way to Damascus. President Assad fled to the Russian air force base from where he and his family escaped to Russia which officially stated it has offered him and his family political asylum. Even before the announcement, the Syrian embassy was flying the flag of the liberating group. The United Nations has asked for global humanitarian support for the Syrian people and a lifting of sanctions against the country and presumably against those the West had previously called a terrorist group. The group leading the fight in Syria had had previous association with Al Qaeda and sometimes with the Islamic state of Abukar al-Baghdadi but has now dissociated itself from its previous connection with the two terrorist groups.

    The Arab world seems to welcome the ouster of the Assad regime and Qatar is promising huge financial support and so is the UAE. Not much has been said by Egypt and Saudi Arabia which are apparently still waiting for reaction of their principals in Washington DC. The American Secretary of State has been holding meetings in the Jordanian capital with leaders of Jordan and the UAE and Saudi Arabia to agree to a common front on Syria. Turkey is backing the regime and has been busy fighting the Turkish enclave in Northern Syria. Turkey is expected to play a major role in the stabilization of the new Syrian regime. The defeat of the Hafez Al Assad regime remains a major defeat and blow for Iran and Russia. No one knows what the two countries are planning jointly or separately to do in Syria. Russia seems bogged down in Ukraine to be too bothered with Syria unless the hubristic rampage of Israel which has been grabbing Syrian land near the Golan heights, sinking Syrian navy, and bombing Syrian army barracks and destroying chemical weapons depots pushes the new regime into the warm embrace of Russia for protection if the Israeli allies do not call Israeli to halt the hundreds of military and bombing raids into Syria.

    The Arab League has called Israel to stop what it is doing in Syria but moral remonstration without military backing amounts to nothing in the situation on hand. Iran appears tamed by joint Israeli and American sabre-rattling against it and it is hobbled down by the possibility of Israeli attack backed by American massive air support. Unless America and its allies move quickly to offer support for the new regime based on mutuality of interest, the Russian presence will stay because the new regime needs it and the humiliation of Russia demands it finds credible support somewhere that Israel will respect. It does not seem the doddering American regime on its way out understands the opportunity being presented to it if Israel, its apparent boss in Jerusalem, will allow it to take it. Turkey which is a member of NATO dominated by the USA may find it more rewarding in Syria allying with Russia for joint influence in the new Syria rather than allowing Israel unhindered promenade into Syria. We are entering interesting times in the Middle East.

  • Mission to Ekiti

    Mission to Ekiti

    Since Dele Farotimi’s arrest in Lagos and transfer to Ekiti 17 days ago, the world seems to have centred around him and his book: Nigeria and its criminal justice system. It is the book that put him in trouble. The contents of the book are said to be defamatory of some individuals and the judiciary.

    Leading the individuals aggrieved by the book, though not jointly, but severally, is accomplished lawyer and educationist, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN). Babalola’s complaint to the police led to the arrest of Farotimi in Lagos and transfer to Ekiti for trial for criminal defamation. The facts of the case are in the public domain, that even a schoolboy can reel them off heart, if asked to do so.

    That will show you how popular the  matter has become. Then, there are people for and against on both sides of the divide. There are those who argue that Farotimi went overboard in what he wrote about Babalola, some lawyers in his chambers, the chambers itself, and the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, for which he has never hidden his contempt.

    At no time did his contempt for the judiciary become more obvious than during the 2023 presidential election which his principal Peter Obi, who coincidentally Babalola also supported, lost. Farotimi was livid that the judiciary upheld the outcome of the election which President Bola Tinubu won. In his characteristic manner, he tore the judiciary apart, wondering how it could have upheld what he called such a flawed poll.

    His controversial book is a reflection of his thoughts on the judiciary in his interviews in the mainstream and social media over the election. That was in a political season where, as they say, “anything goes”. The book is a different matter. The difference is now being seen as the aggrieved are challenging its contents and putting Farotimi to the strictest proof of his claims.

    Farotimi does not lack supporters. Here, I am not talking about the social media crowd that usually goes into a frenzy on matters that it knows little or nothing about. I am talking about the high and mighty; the affluent and the influential who would go to any extent to protect their honour and integrity. These are people, who if they were in Babalola’s shoes would not listen to any plea for mercy until they have exacted their pound of flesh from Farotimi.

    These rich supporters of Farotimi are in two camps. On one side are those that have seen what Farotimi is not seeing. On the other are those who believe in what he wrote, warts and all. So, the former group led by his main man, Obi believes that it is better to resolve the matter amicably, but the latter comprising the leadership of a faction of Afenifere does not. Obi has seen the danger ahead and wants to leverage his relationship with Babalola to avert it.

    He has met with Babalola who appears receptive to his proposal. But the issue is Farotimi, who is reportedly insisting on fighting to the end. He has the right to take any course of action. But he should remember that whatever option he goes for has consequences. Obi has done what he deems right. His initiative may not have been appreciated by Farotimi. As usual, he is insisting on his position in the book. As we wrote here last week, he can do that as long as he can prove the allegations therein.

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    Obi knows why he initiated the peace moves. He might have done it to avoid a crack within his fold. Or he might have done it after seeing the grave allegations Farotimi made against Babalola. Can those allegations be substantiated? Obi might have asked himself. So, to help Farotimi save his face, Obi might have decided to beg Babalola on his behalf. Farotimi would have none of that. He said he never sent anybody to beg Babalola on his behalf.

    Of course, the world knows that. Obi and his team that comprised Sola Ebiseni, the Labour Party’s candidate in the November 16 Ondo State governorship election, among others, was on a peace mission, all for the sake of a loyalist who fought tooth and nail for him during the last presidential election. How do you abandon such a man in his hour of need? Obi has done what he should do for a follower. Whether the follower appreciates that move or not is a different matter entirely.

    If the follower decides to play along with self-styled revolutionaries or others egging him on just for the purpose of noisemaking and without cogent proof of the allegations contained in his book, then he should be prepared for any eventualities. The choice, I reiterate, is Farotimi’s. He is not only an adult, he is a lawyer to boot, who knows what is right and wrong. He knows what to do in the present circumstance to end this case. Babalola has set out the conditions for truce.

    Those conditions, I want to believe, are not cast in iron. They can still be worked upon until both parties reach an agreeable point. The truth is the odds are against Farotimi. He got himself into this mess and he is the only one that can extricate himself from it. It will do him well to calm down and listen to the voices of reason. It will do him no good to keep the company of people urging him to keep pursuing the same lines in the book, if he knows he has nothing to prove those allegations.

    He should like a fighting ram retreat to draw strength. No matter what people may say, that is no weakness, but wisdom. Only a fool fights and dies in battle. He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. The choice is Farotimi’s.

  • Kemi Badenoch’s phenomenal rise

    Kemi Badenoch’s phenomenal rise

    Kemi Badenoch, Britain’s Leader of  Conservative Party and the leader of Opposition, while recently reflecting on her challenges of growing up in Lagos in the eighties had  described Nigeria  as a country  plagued by “fear, insecurity, and corruption”, a comment VP Kashim Shettima, groomed in an environment where leaders play the ostrich, found offensive. He therefore choose the event highlighting the contributions of Nigerian immigrants to national development in Abuja last week not only to acknowledge the Nigerian government’s pride in Badenoch’s achievements, but also to remind her of her right to remove the Kemi from her name instead of denigrating Nigeria.

    Kemi Badenoch has since come under severe attack from all manners of self-proclaiming patriots and self-serving media platforms. But sure-footed Badenoch is not going to be intimidated by those who have chosen to play the ostrich instead of addressing the problems bedevilling Nigeria. She is therefore standing by her words.

    “I tell the truth. I tell it like it is. I am not going to couch my words”, she added

    Badenoch’s greatest advantage is that for her political socialization, she went through parents who as medical doctors bothered only about their patients without losing sleep over the larger society and her challenges. That she is believed to be on the right-wing of the Conservative Party should therefore not surprise anyone. That she was at 16 exposed to British “political culture whose components are “values, beliefs and emotional attitudes about how government ought to be conducted” (Samuel Beer) prepared her for her choice of politics as a career at 25.

    Those  accusing her of singing one creed when she needed Nigerian voters at constituency level and another now that she has an ambition beyond leadership of her Conservative Party, should understand Badenoch is a political genius who knows how to make a choice that will not lead to future regret when faced with environmental limitations. She must be given credit for knowing how to exploit both her psychological and operational environments to her own advantage (Sprout and Sprout Journal of Conflict resolution1 (1957). The truth is that Kemi Badenoch did not achieve what many see as a miracle by accident. She came fully prepared.

    British political culture coupled with her “very tough upbringing as a middle class living in a house in Lagos with no running water or electricity,” accounts for her strong character and readiness to fight her own battles.

    As a Shadow Secretary for Housing Communities and Local Government, she publicly criticised Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman.  It was also claimed she had a confrontation with Canada over Canadian demands to lift the ban on hormone treated beef being sold to UK consumers.  In July 2024, The Guardian reported at least three officials working under Badenoch felt “pushed out” by “bullying and traumatising” behaviour, claims Badenoch denied and described as smears from former staff.

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    She has made her choice between Nigeria and Britain. “Our country” she once declared, “is not a dormitory for people to come here and make money. It is our home. Those we chose to welcome, we expect to share our values and contribute to our society. British citizenship is more than having a British passport but also a commitment to the UK and its people.” Sunday Telegraph- September 2024

    Accusing Badenoch of unpatriotic behaviour therefore as some media platforms that falsely swear in the name of patriotism have tried to do long after declaring her loyalty to another country is to stand logic on its head. But we do understand “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrels’ as argued by Samuel Johnson back in 1775. Nothing can be more paradoxical than the fact that those today swearing in the name patriotism yesterday served as promoters of Dele Farotimi, who as a leading light of the ‘Obidients’, a euphemism for an unquestioning group, went to US where he recklessly declared before an audience albeit without proof that “as I stand before you, a convicted drug baron is about to be sworn as president of my country”.

    Noisy but empty activists and their promoters perhaps need a lesson in patriotism by America that recently elected a man who on account of over 36 convictions including corruption, women abuse, tax evasion, insurrection etc can be best described as a crook.

    But back to Badenoch’s thesis. Was Nigeria under a siege between 1983 and 1999? The answer is yes to Lagosians except those below 35 years of age who were misled by their sponsors and some media platforms to visit violence on government and private properties in Lagos

    Between 1984 and 1999, neither Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Gbolahan Mudashiru Marwa nor Olagunsoye Oyinlola had answer to insecurity in Lagos. Lagos in the words of Badenoch “was a place where almost everything seemed broken”; “there was no freedom either, the government deciding which school your child would go to, deciding what businesses could or could not operate all the way to arrests with no trial, state-sanctioned murder”.

    She was right about “destructive government policies” including Babangida’s commercialization policies through which most of our public enterprises were sold at next to nothing to military fronts and Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which opened our market to importation of manufactured goods which sounded the death knell of our budding industries, the collapse of our naira which marked the beginning of ‘japa’ syndrome of our educated youths.

    Badenoch’s only error was describing the confusion as socialism. If anyone was practicing socialism at all, it is Britain that has in response to Karl Max prediction that capitalism carries within it enough contradiction to lead to its implosion, introduced welfare policies for the most vulnerable of their citizens.

    But we have Badenoch to thank for bringing the past to pain because our youths who were denied the opportunity to study history do not understand where the rain started to beat us. Like it is in the north, where the almajiris are mere disposable instruments of political bargaining, Lagos’ urban immigrants are canon fodders in the war against their Lagos host that give them succour.

    While it is true that many of the Lagos State developmental projects from rail line to General Hospital in all LGAs were the brainchild of Jakande, contrary to claims by revisionists posing as journalists, change of fortune for Lagos did not come until after 1999 when Bola Tinubu started clearing refuse dumps that enveloped Lagos, earning the city the description of ‘the dirtiest city in the world’.

    There was also general insecurity as Badenoch had pointed out. Lagos residents were routinely attacked in broad day light on Oshodi bridge, and Ketu bridge while Mile Two and Okokomaiko were no-go areas after 7pm. It was Bola Tinubu who found answer to insecurity challenges that defied Marwa’s heroic efforts and rehabilitation of collapsed Lagos roads Oyinlola could not find bitumen to mend.

    Let me share my own personal experience with you dear readers. I live in an estate not too far from Lagos State Secretariat.  It is not unusual to see through your window as many as 15 AK-47 wielding robbers some nights. There was in fact particular house down the street said to belong to Senator Chuba Okadigbo’s friend that was under periodic attack. The poor man, with a small stature had to be kept inside a water tank by his wife the last time they came.

    And when they came for me, I was left with nothing except the boxer I was wearing and my lacerated palms I was using to wade off machete attack aimed at my head while my wife and I were on our knees. A neighbour we fondly call Emir in the estate came to give me something to wear the following morning. The massive alarm machine Marwa encouraged us to procure from Lagos State and mounted on our building was useless when the marauders came calling

    I was tempted to flee like many of my neighbours. But I was held back by the pains of going to procure cement directly from West African Portland Cement, going to buy sand in Alapere, going to Nigerite to negotiate rebate for roofing sheets with Yemisi Shyllon and following Engineer Bella to Ijebu Ode to buy planks.

    My family weathered the storm but my children who often woke up at the slightest sound in the night, like Badenoch, bore the scars.

    Tinubu brought sanity back to Lagos in 1999.  For us in my estate, all he did was taking government off our back by creating LDAs for us. I think we got two armed police men. Residents taxed themselves by contributing money to procure transformers and to tar some of the inner roads. Heaven as they say helps those who help themselves. Today our estate is one of the most peaceful in Lagos.

    Except anti-Tinubu and anti-Lagos sponsored EndSARS vandals and the Obidient children of hate and anger, those of us who live here since the eighties long before most of them were born or came as fortune seekers, are aware that the foundation of today’s peaceful and prosperous Lagos with network of roads, fly-overs, General Hospitals in all Local Government Areas, the Atlantic City, the blue and red rail lines were laid between 1999 and 2007. These are facts revisionist posing as journalists cannot change.

  • Just 10 grand!

    Just 10 grand!

    It is a simple matter, but GTCO is still adamant. It is going to two months now that I have been engaging the bank in a back and forth over this simple matter of returning my 10 grand. It is simple because they

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    can simply look through their books and sort things out. It has refused to do so and I have also refused to budge. The battle continues until the matter is resolved. Is it not just 10k? I can hear you ask. Na only 10k o!

  • The return of President Mahama

    The return of President Mahama

    On December 9, the electoral commission of Ghana declared Dr  John Dramani  Mahama, candidate of the National  Democratic Party (NDC) and former president elected president again after having lost power eight years ago to the Oxford University-educated 80-year old Nana Akufo -Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). This time, the 68-year old Mahama defeated Akufo-Addo’s vice president,  61 years old  Mammadu  Bawumia , winning  almost 57% of the vote . The people of Ghana seem to remember the infrastructural exploits of building roads and providing low cost housing for the vulnerable sector of the electorate and the general Joie de vivre in Ghana prevailing in the country during the time of Dr Mahama. There were accusations of corruption which remained unproven during the  John Dramani Mahama’s years and the same has been levied against the Akufo-Addo presidency which has borrowed  huge foreign loans to support its dollarization policy of the regime which has not solved the economic problems of Ghana despite the recent discovery of crude oil in the country and the rise in the country’s production of gold  and other minerals, a rise which has been marred by indiscriminate  illegal mining by Chinese itinerant miners whose activities are alleged to have devastated some communities in Ghana. Just like in Nigeria, where mineral exploitation has apparently led to the decline in agricultural production, cocoa production which is Ghana’s main foreign exchange earner has also declined.

    Akufo-Addo presided over such a bad economy in a generation with high inflation, unemployment and huge almost unpayable debts that the (NPP) was driven out of power by a disappointed electorate. One great outcome of the election which was bitterly fought but which the losing candidate graciously conceded even before the final tally of the votes which other African countries including its bigger neighbour Nigeria should learn from.

    The incoming president has promised to renegotiate the recently borrowed $3 billion from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the purpose of restructuring the economy. He has also promised to curtail the inflationary spiral and introduce tax reforms and bring back his previous policies of infrastructural modernization. How he would accomplish this without raising taxes remains a moot question. The problem with Ghana is overdependence on imports and the people’s taste for foreign goods and the neglect of home made goods. Perhaps this is the time for closer look at how to make the economy work for the people through closer integration with the economies of its neighbours in ECOWAS particularly the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The recent election in Senegal that has led to questioning of old dogmas of colonial dependency and the military coups in Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad manifesting opposition to previous colonial arrangements, should call the attention of any party coming into power in the region of the need for radical economic rethinking different from what sufficed in the past. Akufo-Addo when faced with economic problems at home chose the easiest victims of targeting Nigerian traders and imposing heavy charges of making them deposit some millions of

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    dollars before they could be given trade permits thus ignoring the protocols of ECOWAS which allow freedom of movement of people and capital. This policy created bad blood between the country and Nigeria and did not solve the problems that they were intended to solve but rather complicated fraternal relations between Ghana and Nigeria. The incoming president would have to solve this problem but Nigerians must desist from taking liberty for license and abusing the freedom granted to them in another country as our compatriots have been accused of doing in Kenya, South Africa and Namibia and other places in Africa and outside the continent.

    On a personal note, I wish to congratulate the new president of Ghana who by previous performance should be able to handle the problems of economic development of Ghana without hankering after a second term which seems to hinder the performance of newly elected presidents in African states and other parts of the world. Since he was president before, he is not new to the job because he presumably will be barred from another term. He is not new to the political and economic leaders of the West African region and Ghana’s trading and economic partners abroad. He can assume the friendship of Nigeria’s current leaders since he comes from the same ideological hue from the largely socialist tendencies of the APC ruling party in Nigeria.

    On personal terms, he is well known in Nigeria. He has a doctorate degree honoris causa in literature from Ekiti State University. He is a creative writer on his own and a close admirer of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe – two of Nigeria’s foremost writers. I have no doubt that in times of difficulties, the current government of Nigeria would give him support as much as possible because he is a friend of Nigeria unlike his predecessor Akufo-Addo who was openly envious if not totally hostile to Nigeria. Dramani Mahama‘s party the NDC sees itself as the inheritor of the radical legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, the founding father of Independent Ghana who built the country on nationalist foundation totally different from the ethnic tendencies of rivals who depended on Akan supremacy of the Asante/ Fante coalition whereas the party of Nkrumah’s tendencies tried to rally the smaller ethnic groups of Ghana notably the Ga, Nzima, Ewe and the Northern groups.  This group seems to have held together despite the fact both candidates of the NDC and NPP are from the North.  Coming from the North would also help the incoming president to understand and appreciate and prevent incursions of northern cattle rearers into the country and precipitating the kind of security problems in Nigeria and other West African states.

    The economic mismanagement of Ghana was blamed on Muhammadu Bawumia who was in charge of the economic management of the country as vice president to the rather elderly Akufo-Addo who was more given to philosophical flourish and long speeches and Mammadu Bawumia paid for it by the defeat of his party. Whatever was responsible for the defeat of the ruling party, the tendency of the ruling party losing power in Africa has been established in Botswana, Namibia and even South Africa where the power of the ruling ANC was vastly reduced in recent elections and on a global level by the defeat of the Conservative Party by the Labour Party in Great Britain and the Democratic Party by the Republican Party in the USA.

  • Farotimi: Let justice be served

    Farotimi: Let justice be served

    Defamation is not a light matter. It is a serious case which borders on the honour and integrity of the defamed. Nobody wants his reputation destroyed. Our names and reputations are the only things we have going for us. Though inanimate, they breath life when we are not there and speak for us through a third party.

    Behind us, a person will ask and respond all by himself: ‘do you know so and so (mentioning the person’s name): he is a good man’. We all want to be described as such not only in our presence but also when we are not there. This is why we all cherish a good name, which the scripture says, is better than gold and silver.

    A good name matters. It is a legacy that is handed down from generation to generation. No father wants to hand down a soiled name to his children. No matter how bad a father is, he still struggles to look good before his children. He makes them to believe that he is a good man, even when he is not because he does not want them to carry the baggage of his infamous name.

    But then names and reputations can be destroyed by people who do not mean well. They can wake up one morning and cook up stories about someone all in an effort to destroy that person. They will claim free speech in so doing. Free speech is not absolute; it comes with a responsibility. As an advocate of free speech, I know that you cannot write or say something that is untrue about the other person without having your facts. Facts are sacred, comment’s free, according to C.P. Scott, the legendary editor of Manchester Guardian.

    Can you call a man a thief, a fraud, a corrupter of others and a bribe taker when you do not have the facts? The answer is no. The position of the law is also clear on matters like these: ‘he who alleges must prove’. It is not enough to allege, the deponent must go a step further when called upon to do so, to provide proof. Gone are the days when affidavits were taking at their face value. The averments in the affidavits must be proven when you get to court.

    So, also are the allegations made in a book. The author must be ready to prove them when those he mentioned take him up on the allegations against them. A book or any publication for that matter is not an avenue to malign or damage people’s character. A book is meant to entertain, educate and inform. It is not for character assassination. When it is seen as a tool for character assassination, it is the duty of the author to allay the fear of all, especially the aggrieved, that it is not.

    If the author cannot do that, he should be ready to pay the price for his action. There is a thin line between free speech and defamation. Writers have to be cautious of walking this line whenever they are writing. An experience writer knows how to navigate the waters, but an amateur gets easily carried away by what he wants to put down that he is unmindful of the consequences. But a lawyer, even if he is not a writer in that sense, should know better.

    A lawyer, Dele Farotimi’s book: “Nigeria and its criminal justice system” has become a ‘best seller’, according to reports since his travails began following his arrest in Lagos and transfer to Ekiti on December 3. This was a book that publishers did not touch even with a 10-foot pole when he wanted to get it published initially. He had to publish it on his own. Why are the publishers that ran away from the book then today trying to outdo themselves in associating with it?

    It is because of the controversy that it has generated following the author’s arrest and arraignment in an Ekiti magistrate’s court for criminal defamation. A senior advocate of Nigeria and educationist, Aare Afe Babalola, is alleging that Farotimi maligned him in the book. He quoted portions of the book where his character was assassinated. Those portions are not replicated here so that we are not caught in the libel web too. The rule is that you do not repeat a libellous publication under the guise of reporting it. If you do, you also become liable.

    Much has been said in the public domain about the Babalola and Farotimi case. Like Babalola, Farotimi is also well known. Apart from being lawyers, they had a common candidate in Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election. So, in a manner of speaking, they shared something together until Farotimi’s book tore them apart. Farotimi’s allegations, which Babalola denies in their entirety, are now well known to the public, including the publishers that are feasting on the row to make a killing.

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    There are divergent reactions to the case, beginning with what some called Farotimi’s forceful arrest in Lagos before he was taken to Ekiti. Babalola is said to be instrumental in Farotimi’s plight. Babalola says he is fighting to protect the name and integrity that he has built over the years. Every reasonable person will fight such a battle too. About two months ago, activist lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) found himself fighting this same battle when VeryDarkMan (VDM) accused him and his son Folarin over the Bobrisky jail sojourn saga.

    Falana said then that he would not go for criminal defamation because of the work he is doing to decriminalise free speech in West Africa, but he settled for a civil action against VDM. The matter is still in court. Babalola has not only opted for a criminal action, but he is also pursuing a civil case against Farotimi. It is a matter of choice for the aggrieved party. Criminal defamation is no longer an offence in Lagos, but it still is in Ekiti where Farotimi is being tried.

    Farotimi has made his allegations in his book, he now has the chance to prove them in open court so that the whole world will know if they are true. Farotimi should therefore not miss the opportunity that this case has presented him to prove his allegations not only against Babalola but also against all those he mentioned in his now ‘best selling’ book. Babalola is not demanding too much by asking Farotimi to prove his allegations in court.

    I agree that the circumstances of Farotimi’s arrest in Lagos might not have been tidy, but like any other Nigerian treated in that manner, he has his remedy in law. He knows what to do about that. However, this has nothing to do with the case of criminal defamation against him. Farotimi cannot hide under the manner of his arrest to evade providing proof of his allegations against individuals and organisations mentioned in his book.

    We have made talk too cheap for too long in this country. It is time those who engaged in such talks were made to back their claims with facts and figures. This is the kind of society that people like Farotimi say they want. Let him avail himself of the opportunity of his trial to walk the talk. To do otherwise will not make him different from those he has been criticising for ‘running and ruining’ the country.

    Since the Bible says a good name is better than gold and silver, what should a man do if his good name is tarnished? Keep quiet and take it in his strides? Your answer is as good as mine.

  • Rage is a Nigerian marketplace

    Rage is a Nigerian marketplace

    There is a tragic theatre peculiar to the Nigerian public space. The performance unfolds in our virtual and physical domains, where fervent voices rise and ebb in a chorus of fabricated sympathy—a spectacle of outrage measured not by principle, but by partiality.

    When news of Labour Party (LP) scribe, Dele Farotimi’s arrest flickered across cyberspace, reactions swelled in a tidal wave of indignation. His arrest and subsequent trial for alleged defamation of legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), ignited a bonfire of outrage – a flame that crackles with righteous fury but that refuses to burn for the thousands of displaced souls whose homes and livelihoods have been ravaged by banditry and floods. They are huddled, as you read, under tarpaulin skies and a dark pall of uncertainty in Nigeria’s Northeast and Northwest.

    Against the backdrop of disjointed but dubious empathy, it’s forgivable to liken Nigerians’ hypocrisy to a chiaroscuro, a dance of shadow and light, where the spotlight of concern dims at will. On this note, author and social commentator, Reno Omokri’s take stabs like a surgeon’s scalpel. Omokri notes how several Nigerians dismissed Leah Sharibu’s predicament thus: “Who is she? Just one Aboki girl” and not worthy of their sustained interest.

    When Leah Sharibu was abducted into the jaws of terror for refusing to renounce her faith, where were the fiery hashtags and trending chants of liberation? For “2,194 days,” Sharibu has languished in the underworld of terror, her youth corrupted and mortgaged to assuage bestial, selfish interests. Yet, Sharibu defamed no one. She was never accused of slander. Her only crime was her creed.

    How many keyboard warriors pounded her name into the virtual stream of trending algorithms? How many pulpit-pounding pastors, politicians, and rights activists, now chanting the gospel of Farotimi’s freedom, spared a breath for Leah’s deliverance? Perhaps she was too remote, too “ordinary,” too much a girl from the “unimportant” Northeast. In the scales of public concern, her innocence weighed less than the feather of political capital.

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    As Omokri points out, “Gambari pa Fulani ko lejo ninu” — when kin slays kin, it is no crime. The old axiom rings true, its cynicism now a prophecy fulfilled. Despite its flaws, the justice system merely reflects the greater rot: a populace that adjudicates guilt and innocence through the lens of marketable bias.

    Sharibu’s plight, seemingly irrelevant to Nigeria’s political elite and social media influencers, exemplifies a grotesque empathy hierarchy. Farotimi’s saga, though legally intricate, pales in moral urgency compared to her fate. Yet, the nation has chosen its martyr—the man with the megaphone over the girl with inspiring resolve.

    Farotimi’s supporters have weaponized their indignation, functioning like a lynch mob, dismissing the right of Chief Afe Babalola to seek legal redress. In their view, Farotimi’s book is gospel; to question its contents is heresy. But the justice system exists to sift truth from fiction, not to bend to the mob’s whims. Farotimi’s opportunity to prove his claims is now before the court, where evidence—not emotion—must reign.

    The theatre of outrage, indeed, furnishes a grotesque performance. Each actor dons the costume of justice while wielding the dagger of bias. It’s vintage artifice. Farotimi’s supporters passionately shriek for justice and liberty, but their outrage is conveniently soundless when the Southeast drowns in a Monday ritual of enforced paralysis. In that region, every week begins with terror— as the citizenry, frightened and browbeaten, observe a “sit-at-home” at the mercy of a decree scribbled in blood by faceless gunmen. Shops are shuttered, dreams get deferred, even as lives hang on the noose of anarchy.

    Yet, the silence is deafening as those who should speak cower, fearful of offending the sensibilities of their “own.” They hide behind platitudes and equivocations, refusing to condemn the terror that cripples their homeland. Meanwhile, traders lock their doors, children miss their lessons, and the pulse of commerce slows to a deathly throb. Where is the outrage?

    See how quickly the tempest swirled around Farotimi’s case – a storm of hashtags and indignation. Yet, when entire villages are razed, when children wade through floodwaters polluted by the greed of cement giants in Ewekoro and Ibeshe, the winds of outrage fall still. The cries of displaced farmers and poisoned villagers dissolve into the ether. Their miseries do not trend; their plight does not generate clicks. Their suffering, it would seem, lacks the glamour of a courtroom drama and the sparkle of an urban cause.

    The theatre of outrage is a Nigerian marketplace, where vendetta is cloaked in a ruse and merchandised as virtue. If controversy does not fit the script of tribal or ideological bias, it fades into the fog of forgotten news. What manner of conscience shudders at a man’s arrest but shrugs at a child’s captivity? What kind of patriotism chants for Farotimi’s freedom while the chains around Leah Sharibu and the Monday prisoners of the Southeast rust into permanence?

    This selective morality is nothing new. Some would call it the heritage of a divided nation, where every ethnic crack oozes suspicion. It manifests across the country’s media platforms, turning our ideological soapboxes into hubs of explosive carnage.

    Social media, that digital amphitheatre, magnifies this duplicity. Here, intellectuals masquerade as hooligans; activists don the cloaks of opportunists. Every cause is a stage, every tragedy a prop, every outrage a performance rehearsed for maximum applause. They market indignation like a product, packaged and sold to the highest bidder of attention.

    In this virtual wilderness, we relive the infernal crud of frantic personae: the political animal, apolitical pacifist, hyperbolic ‘influencer,’ data-fabulous millennial, and the defiant Gen Z, scud to the shore of national consciousness on the world wide web – all hoisting tribal and sentimental banners. Whatever the bent of their politics, they cuddle one prejudice and cringe from the other as their vanities dictate.

    Such is the tenor of political correctness that has seen many clash in defence and furtherance of random bigotries or a desperate demagogue. Journalists, activists, rights activists, and failed political aspirants afflict our social space like pitiless hooligans, mistaking lava for wit and molten banality for intellect. Their voices weigh like a thundercloud; whether debating celebrity scuffles or their political preferences, their passions sparkle and flit from fetid intelligence to brilliant witlessness.

    If we are to heal, we must abandon this duplicitous dance. The outrage that burns for one must burn for all. The justice that we demand for Dele Farotimi must be the justice that we demand for Leah Sharibu. The freedom that we crave for urban activists must be the freedom that we crave for displaced villagers and terror-stricken children. Our patriotism must be whole, not fractured; our conscience, be a mirror, not a mask.

    Young Nigerians must exercise caution in choosing their role models. It is easy to be swayed by voices that loudly condemn the state of the nation, but not all who decry Nigeria’s failures seek her restoration. Many are simply opportunists in waiting, men and women who will seize power not to heal, but to gorge themselves on the spoils of a broken system.

    Hate, in all its polished deceit, must be unmasked. For as long as we coddle it, it will devour us. The flames of selective rage may feel righteous, but they will consume the very nation we claim to defend. The theatre of outrage must give way to a cathedral of genuine justice—a sacred space where every Nigerian’s pain is acknowledged, and every injustice confronted.

  • Tax Reforms Bills: In defence of opponents

    Tax Reforms Bills: In defence of opponents

    The rejection of President Tinubu’s tax reform package of four main bills: the Nigeria Tax Bill, the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill, and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Tax Reform Bill” by predominantly northern political leaders, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the Northern Governors Forum and some 73 members of the National Assembly, has once again brought the past to pain by reminding us of our intractable crisis of nation-building.

    Predictably, while the bill received the blessing of Ohanaeze, the Igbo socio-cultural group, Afenifere, its Yoruba counterpart and N/Central geopolitical zones who believe the bills represent a transformative opportunity for the rejuvenation of SMES, it was roundly rejected by its northern opponents in spite of the capacity of the bills to “simplify the tax landscape, reduce the burden on small businesses, and streamline tax collection processes”.

    But as we say in this business, the medium is the news. Precisely because attack on the opponents of the four bills are coming from southern politicians and social media assailants who hardly understand the issues at stake, I cannot but sympathise with those opponents of the bills who have come under intense stress and strain these past two weeks. They are, in my opinion, the only set of politicians who know what they want out of Nigeria and how to fight for it. They have an unwavering commitment to their demand no matter how sectional or parochial since “Nigerian nationalism became fractured by the dynamics of power politics, or the struggle for the so-called national cake”. (Mogwugo Okoye, African Guardian, Dec 27, 1993).

    Many have long concluded that the problem of Nigeria politics is the problem of the dominant ethnic groups, who insist that no one gets what they cannot get, their hypocritical educated elites and their political parties. Of the three competing dominant groups, the confused Yoruba who seem not to know what they want out of Nigeria, is most guilty. It is on record that while the more conservative elements among their celebrated leaders such as Bode Thomas, SLA Akintola and Rotimi Williams, wanted regionalism to protect their Yoruba nation from the reign of one-eyed king, their leader, Obafemi Awolowo, was an unrepentant federalist. This many have argued was because the Yoruba are by nature federalist. Others have also argued that it was because federalism guarantees unity in diversity in deeply divided societies following “the purgatory of two world wars in the 20th century” when federal revolution was regarded “as the only safeguard for peace and stability in a rapidly changing world.” (Daniel Elazer). The less charitable have argued that Awolowo was a victim of his ambition to rule Nigeria having blamed Awolowo for developing  a messianic complex believing he could replicate the giant strides he made in the West. The question northern hegemonic powers who detested Yoruba arrogance, according to Professor Banji Akintoye who recently narrated his encounter with a northern colleague, has always been “who told Awolowo, northern youths wanted free education?”

    Of course Awo paid for his audacity. Shortly after Sardauna, Tafawa Balewa and Michael Okpara had mooted the idea of a preventive detention system in the country, Balewa declared state of emergency in the West on May 29, 1962 while Isaac Boro’s Ijaw uprising and Benue/Jos uprising that were suppressed by the military by force of arms did not attract declaration of state of emergency.

    Balewa went on to illegally inaugurate Coker Commission of Inquiry to look into the operations of Western Region’s corporations. In case that failed, Balewa also inaugurated treasonable felony probe which later jailed Awo and his supporters. Ahamdu Bello, according to Trevor Clark, “saw an opportunity to do in Awolowo, while the NCNC saw an opportunity to destroy AG and Western Region”. (Trevor Clark: Balewa the Right Honorable Man,  pages (550-554).

    The Igbo of the east are perhaps the best at the game of ostrich playing – hiding their heads in the sand believing no one sees them. Their goal, like that of the hegemonic power in the north, is the control of Nigeria. Zik as an Ibo jingoist gave this away in his presidential address to the Ibo Federal Union in 1949 when he declared: “It would appear that God of Africa has specially created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages…” In 1948, another Ibo leader and member of the legislature had said the domination of Nigeria by the Ibo is a question of time.

    The game plan was promotion of a unitary system in a multi-ethnic society, or in the alternative, splitting the country into unwieldy 17 states that could not sustain themselves and where federating states have no power to eject criminals who import fake drugs into their states or armed immigrant herdsmen who illegally occupy federating states’ reserved forests.

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    Zik like Awo was also humbled. He allowed northern elite to root for the status quo because it has given them so much in addition to entrenching their hegemony in the nation in spite of creation of smaller state out of the huge former northern region. The north and its political elite have demonstrated that they are by far more astute politicians and more shrewd bargainers. Unlike the Yoruba and Ibo adept at playing the ostrich, they have never pretended about their goal which is Nigeria that would serve as home to stateless Fulani across West Africa.

    The north could not have asked for a better supporter than the British colonial masters who in an effort to protect her neo-colonial interest in Nigeria, encouraged and actively aided our northern ruling elite to betray Nigeria. Britain easily acceded to the 1951 northern three points demand: i.e. 50% of membership of the Legislative Council as against 25 for each of the regions,  revenue allocation based on per capita and retaining the boundaries especially between the north and west. (The 1951 census exercise was based largely on assumptions. With the rejection of the 1962 figures by northern leaders, a new census held in 1963 discovered additional 8.5 million people in the north bringing the northern population to 31m).

    And just as the 1951 allocation of 50 percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives to the Northern Region meant that only laws acceptable to the region would be passed by the house, today’s opponent of Tinubu’s tax bill are counting on their numerical strength to decide the fate of the bill.

    Another demonstration of British support for the north was James Robertson’s decision to call on Balewa to form government on December 15, 1959 with voting returns showing  that NPC was trailing the two other parties by 116  to 150, a decision that rendered the final result of NPC 150 seats  to  the other two parties 162 seats and independent 8, that came later on the December 19 just ‘a force majeure’.

    Ahmadu Bello rather than deny that Britain aided the north to hold the nation hostage, explained on page 33 of his book, My Life: The Sardauna of Sokoto that “The British were the instrument of destiny and were fulfilling the will of God in the way they did it all”.

    While Zik and Awo kept on playing the ostrich long after the death of nationalism, Prime Minster Balewa who had earlier described Nigeria as a British intention” insisted revenue must be based on need rather than derivation of resources”.

    In an answer to those who challenged him to act as a patriot, he had said ‘we are trying to build a mighty house on a foundation of straw … the question I have always asked: do we want Nigeria to be a happy place for everybody or a hell to the masses and a paradise for the few? North would very much like to march with the rest of Nigeria just at a reasonable speed, not at an impossible speed for the north”.

    Like their forbears, this is the same message northern critics of Tinubu’s tax bills are passing. The joke is on southern politicians including  Zik, the foremost Nigerian nationalist and celebrated intellectual who told reporters in London in 1957 that he and Ahmadu Bello’s position on the minority issue was taken in the interest of Nigerian unity. Sixty four years after, Nigerians are haunted by the echoes of Zik’s October 1, 1960’s “we are today no more a geographical expression” to deride Awo, his more discerning opponent.

    For all his pains, the celebrated Zik of Africa became a titular president, an onlooker while Balewa exercised all powers by virtue of the September 19, 1963 Republican Constitution which abolished the Judicial Service Commission, replaced the Privy Council in London with the Supreme Court as the highest court of appeal, and  the  enactment of  a Preventive Detention Act to restrain personal liberty.

    Today, the consolation for Nigerians who love our country is that President Tinubu by his ongoing efforts at walking the tight rope understands the imperative of addressing the national question.