The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Professor Ayo Banjo at 80

    Since the appointment of Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike as first African Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan, the position of the vice chancellorship of this premier university has been greatly sought after by distinguished academics. To be appointed vice chancellor of this university therefore, is a mark of honour and a demonstration of the high esteem in which the occupant of the vice chancellorship of the University of Ibadan is held. Professor Ayo Banjo’s appointment as vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan is therefore a great achievement. He brought to this position, dignity, honesty, competence, distinction and administrative savoire-faire fairness and firmness.

    At 80, it is my pleasure on behalf of many distinguished Nigerians who have passed through the portals of the great university to celebrate him publicly. Many Nigerians are familiar with the name of Ayo Banjo as an author of secondary school textbooks on English Grammar. The name Banjo is apparently quite common among the Ijebu sub-nationality of the Yoruba nation. The other well-known Banjos are associated with the exploits of that dreamer Colonel Victor Banjo, a Yoruba officer who fought on the side of Biafra during the Nigerian civil war and who was judicially murdered by Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegu-Ojukwu who accused him of treason. This other Banjo is not related to Ayo Banjo.

    I got close to Professor Ayo Banjo as a neighbour but I have always known him over the years as a lecturer, Professor, Dean of Arts and Vice Chancellor of the premier University of Ibadan. I have also known his family even if from a distance. When I was in the sixth form in Ibadan Grammar school, Professor Ayo Banjo’s father was the principal of St. Luke’s College, a neighbouring teachers’ college in Ibadan. Canon Banjo as we knew him, was a distinguished man, a teacher and at one time, a member of parliament in Ibadan. I also know some of Professor Banjo’s siblings like Gboyega, Kunle who was in Ibadan Grammar School the same time I was there and their eldest brother, who practiced general medicine successfully in Ibadan. It is not out of place to use the hackneyed phrase of Professor Banjo being an “illustrious son of an illustrious father”. It will not be totally incorrect to say that Professor Banjo was born with a silver spoon in his mouth because his father was a highly educated man and by the standards of those days of yore, he was a man of means. Professor Banjo had his secondary education in Igbobi College of which he is very proud. Igbobi shared with Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti my own alma mater links in the past especially with missionary teachers going to and from our two schools. So I can guess what kind of academic and moral upbringing Professor Banjo would have had in Igbobi College of those days. This was a college far removed from the hustle and bustle of colonial Lagos and was located at the outskirts of the town but of course, today, the college is completely sandwiched within the growing metropolis of Lagos. Igbobi College of Professor Banjo’s time was a very cosmopolitan college of young people from different ethnic backgrounds cohabiting in the various dormitories. The impression this would have had on Professor Banjo must have been very fundamental to his growth and development as a true Nigerian without ethnic hang-ups. After leaving Igbobi College and bearing in mind, his family background of economic sufficiency if not affluence, it was natural for him to want to go abroad for further studies, a desire which his father adequately met.This made it possible for Professor Banjo to be educated abroad before coming back home to work and to do research that earned him a PhD of Ibadan University in English. After his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, Professor Banjo taught English at Government College, Ughelli in what then was in the heartland of the Mid-west region an experience and opportunity which can only be dreamt of and dreaded today.The National Youth Service for young graduate does superficially but unsatisfactorily offer Nigerians to experience cultures outside their area of birth and comfort. But in the days of young Ayo Banjo it was a routine affair because the Western region and the other two regions, Northern and Eastern regions were agglomeration of different nationalities and tribes and our leaders were then genuinely building a nation, albeit with the help of the colonial officials out of the multitudinous ethnic groups embedded in the belly of the geographical expression known as the Nigerian state. We can only look back nowadays to that golden era when things were not as complicated as they are today and when the state was not dying from a metastasised corruption that is eating at the very fabric of the state.

    When I was dean of the college of humanities, of Redeemer’s University, Mowe in Ogun State, I had the honour of inviting Professor Ayo Banjo to deliver our maiden college lecture in 2006. We still talk about the erudition and scholarship of that lecture up till today. Humility comes naturally to Professor Banjo and for a man of his calibre and distinction, this ability of his can be very overwhelming to subordinates and lesser people. As a neighbour, he is involved in community association for the security of our neighbourhood.In all our meetings, he never allows his status to overwhelm less privileged and less cerebrally and materially endowed members of this association.  Whenever there is a misunderstanding in our neighbourhood, Professor Ayo Banjo, the Vicar’s son is always a peacemaker and would go to any length to reconcile those who are at logger heads against each other.

    He is an author and a good speaker who has been invited to several fora to present lectures or positions on given problems that the university community in Nigeria usually face. He has been a true scholar and has supervised several students who are now professors and has thus replicated himself so that his likes will always be found in the citadels of learning in Nigeria. Apart from being Vice-Chancellor of University of Ibadan, he has also served as Pro-Chancellor not once but twice of universities in Nigeria. He has also been involved with moderating the demands for higher salaries and better conditions of service by fellow academics because he enjoys both the trust of his colleagues and those who are at the helm of affairs of our country. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Ibadan and for all his services and academic achievements, a grateful nation honoured him with the highest academic accolade of granting him the national merit (NNOM). Professor Banjo can never be forgotten because of his transparency, his intellect, his humble demeanour and his intelligence which manifest at all times in whatever assignment he is given. Professor Ayo Banjo and other colleagues of his particularly those at the highest level of humanistic studies established the Nigerian Academy of Letters to co-ordinate the efforts and exertion of people in the liberal arts in their effort to put Nigerian scholarship in the global arena. He is a foundation member and fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. His effort has brought to the Academy, distinction and resources without which it would have been difficult for the academy to reach its present height of development and national recognition. The Academy’s membership and fellowship are now much desired by scholars in various disciplines in the liberal arts at home and by Nigerian scholars in the black diaspora. But for Professors Ayo Banjo, Ayo Bamgbose, J.F. Ade-Ajayi, Tekena Tamuno, Munzali Jibril, Tunji Oloruntimehin, Segun Odunuga and others, the Academy would not have come into existence and provide a paradigm for others to follow.

    It is our hope that the current and future generations would learn from people like Professor Banjo or else, our nation has no hope. It is a pleasure and privilege for me to have the opportunity to celebrate this great man of letters, this Renaissance man, this man of distinction, this amiable and jolly good fellow.

  • Parched youth and mob reality (1)

    This is scorched earth; a temenos where neither hope nor humaneness will grow again, if we do not change. In moments of introspection, when my thoughts drift to the imminence of a Nigerian dystopia, where anarchy manifests to replace historic laws and mores that keeps the beasts in us tame, I cringe in fathomless fear.

    I am frightened of what villainy we are capable of and what grief may come in its wake. I am afraid of what blight we could become to the world and what impediment we may constitute to our survival as a race in the universal order of civilizations and natural selection.

    My fright accentuates in the heat of our acceptable realities; these realities constitute what is being vigorously marketed as the new Nigerian reality. In the perpetuation of this new social consciousness, the youth becomes a powerful force in its propagation – oftentimes serving willingly, without demur, in the actualization of morbid fantasies of thieves, looters and blinkered murderers constituting corporate Nigeria, national and international ruling class.

    The Nigerian dilemma is substantially ideological and structural. Our predatory ruling class knows this hence it desperately and decisively rips asunder any political permutation and cultural incarnation that has the potential to ignite a citizenry-centred revolt.

    The ruling class is aware that the latent will is there, as always. It sees the tragic indices clutter the ranks and realities of the oppressed working class and unemployed youth of the backwaters. It knows that, eventually, the realities will aggravate and ignite like tinder of strife and citizenry revolt. The ruling class is thus essentially committed to thwart any such rebellion by us, the oppressed.

    To this end, the Nigerian state meticulously denies the citizenry access to both tangible and intangible infrastructure needed to actualize our dreams of progress and prosperous nationhood.

    In its frantic lunge for self-preservation, the ruling class seeks the perpetuation of the status quo despite its attendant ills of political and socio-economic insecurity. Rather than initiate dependable measures to resolve our inestimable afflictions, the Nigerian leadership fosters a dystopian culture of plunder, hatred and bloodletting.

    Within this worrisome state of affairs, it’s amazing to see politicians and corporations deploy the media, entertainment industry and social institutions as if we can afford to perpetuate our sovereignty and civilization on a culture of prejudice, imperceptible growth, decadent leadership, excessive consumption and a fast-depleting crude oil endowment.

    To justify such delusional frame of mind, they deploy the media particularly, to nourish our collective mania for hope at the expense of truth. Thus evolves the new Nigerian reality – insidiously parasitic, self-delusional and fuelled by communal psychosis. The ruling class – constituted by the politicians and corporate titans – meanwhile, is aware of the imminent dystopia and is manically preparing for it hence their wanton acquisitions of properties in exclusive districts abroad and the relocation of their families and assets therein.

    While they prepare for the imminent political and socio-economic apocalypse, the Nigerian citizenry chooses to engage in the pursuit of the good life. Of the citizenry, the most crucial enthusiasts of this fabled dream severally called the ‘good life’ or ‘Nigerian dream’ is the youth. As youths, even though we suffer complete evisceration of our most basic civil liberties and crass insensitivity to our plight by our leadership, we seek escape in entertainment and false reality. Thus is the tragedy of the new Nigerian reality, or put more precisely, the reality of the masses or mob reality.

    Our reality becomes a pornographic parable of reckless lust, sinister politics, fraudulent economics, consequence-free violence and sex. In our new cultural order, pagan idolatry triumphs; it accentuates our conceit and pretensions to righteousness or morality.

    In this contemporary reality of ours, we perpetuate a ritual culture of ethnic and religious bigotry, wanton sexuality and lust for unearned greatness. Consider for instance, our inclinations to accept and institutionalize decadent cultures of easy money, life-on-a-sweepstake, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and bestiality as approved by decadent and predatory nations of the so-called ‘first world’; this moral torpedo of ours, defies the universe’s due process even as it establishes our cowardliness in the face of life’s vicissitudes and grotesque imperialistic designs from abroad.

    Our contemporary pagan cult of self-worship, political correctness and social idolatry epitomizes inordinate mutations characteristic of ritual victims ripped apart by the ‘modern’ dagger of evolution and 21st century neo-colonialist agenda.

    As in Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the Nigerian youth, caught in a swirl of conflicting cultures of socialization, evolves, tormented by the internal presence of another being illegitimately enwombed like a daemonic fetus amid clutters of puppy fat symbolizing decadent socialization and stagnant adolescence. Thus we have men and women in their prime eternally stuck at the impressionable age of 13, vying to occupy drivers’ seats in our bumpy ride to the good life and future of our dreams.

    The poet Leon Staff advocates the healing balm of poetry from the Warsaw ghetto but can poetry be the incense that fires the courage of the Nigerian youth? Can introspective verse excite latent will that we have learnt to smother in pursuit of the good life?

    What is the good life? Gold plated doors and sofas? Plastered walls and Venetian glass? Platinum pumps and home theatre? Spring locks, expensive cars and wine cellars? An intimidating bank account, trophy wives and concubines? Appearance on Forbes’ shortlist of the world’s filthty rich? Frequent trips for leisure and acquisition of expensive properties at home and abroad?

    It is only those blessed with a gift of the mind’s eye as well as an infinite capacity to harness the limitless possibilities of the imagination that can go to bat in the interest of posterity and the collective. Only these few may find the courage to peer into Nietzsche’s molten pit of human maladies. There is no gainsaying however, that the Nigerian elite arrogate to itself this crusader role. So far, this seemingly intuitive band have established their mental and psychological capacities to resist; they however, fail woefully in establishing their physical capacities for defiance or mount what is romantically extolled as revolt.

    It is about time we revolted. I hereby advocate no bloody rebellion or premeditated targeted killing in the name of thinning out the predatory ruling herd in the interest of our oft preyed-upon mass. This is because for such bloody pogrom to manifest, it must be actualized by a social divide driven by anarchical precepts and bestiality of the mob.

    Let the Nigerian youth unite around noble goals, on a common platform, to beat back the claws of the incumbent ruling class. Let us now institute that uprising we tirelessly and annoyingly advocate on soapboxes we mount in our pubs, intellectual gatherings and courtyards.

    Let the Nigerian youth begin to seek the actualization of change we can believe in and sustain over the long haul. To this end, we have had such inspiring initiatives like Gbolahan Macjob and company’s Nigerian Youth Congress (NYC); so do we have Pan Atlantic University, (PAU)’s School of Media and Communication’s PT5 Media Class’ IPDC – Nigerians for Change initiative. But despite their promise, they haven’t the life and possibilities they ought to exemplify as platforms for progressive change. And the reasons are hardly farfetched.                                            • To be continued…

  • Of jobs, risks and rewards

    Of jobs, risks and rewards

    IT was a moving – and rare – spectacle. Doctors in their white house coats, carrying placards and marching in some cities. Thousands of them have just been “fired” in one moment of presidential fury for going on strike.

    Poor guys. Their tough visage betrayed a deep anger against a negligent system in which professionals and their children stand a little chance of living well, even as their trade has become so risky. One of them, Dr Stella Shade Aneyo Adadevoh, has just died after contracting the Ebola virus while trying to save the Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who imported the lethal disease to Nigeria.

    But not all professionals are that unlucky. Some are just lucky; they work hard and it pays. All is smooth. Others are not just lucky, they are endowed with good luck. From the obscurity and humility of a village life, they get catapulted onto the apogee of their career.

    Super Eagles coach – should I say former? – and his would – be employers have been haggling as if the subject at issue is a real estate deal involving a huge Banana Island property. First, he was said to be the target of some countries seeking a good coach to drive their soccer dream. That was just after the World Cup. Then, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) asked him to return. Keshi was offered N5m monthly, which he dismissed as “slavery pay”. Then N8m. No deal. As the officials racked their heads to resolve the matter before a fast approaching Nations Cup qualifier match, the Big Boss announced through his agent – nobody negotiates such a job all by himself; there are agents who are well paid to do so – that he wanted N15 monthly.

    Now, we hear the NFF needs the President’s assistance to pay such a gargantuan salary. The Keshi contract haggling has opened a huge debate on professionalism, risks and rewards.

    Being a Super Eagles coach is, in fact, no joke. He is expected to develop the game at the grassroots so that the national team will have at any time a pool of stars to draw from. Besides, he must be able to win trophies. Consider the tension on the bench during critical matches, the gesticulations, the sweating, the hollering and, of course, the chewing gum that seems to keep the emotion and the tension in check.

    Bagging the job is like hitting the jackpot. A $20,000 match bonus. If the match is drawn, the coach gets $10,000 and World Cup appearance fee of $300,000. Free accommodation, business class travel and a fleet of vehicles, including the exotic Sport Range. The coach was also given $20,000 by one of the biggest supporters of the game, Globacom, for guiding the Eagles to win the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa. And an unfettered access to the President. Even bank and oil company chiefs must be envious.

    Almost two years after he was accused of stealing N21b pension fund – he denied any wrongdoing – Pension Reform Task Force chief Abdulrasheed Maina is back in the news. Maina’s task force, you may wish to recall, was drafted in to clean up the mess in the system. But it ended up muddling up everything. As soon as Maina was accused of having his hand in the till, he announced the discovery of more stolen pension cash, usually in billions. And the game went on and on until we all lost focus of the issue – that pensioners were dying and some villainous civil servants were living like kings and movie stars after stealing much of  the cash.

    So bad was the situation that the Senate issued an arrest warrant against Maina, but the then Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Dikko Abubakar claimed Maina’s whereabouts was unknown. Maina had an army of police guards. He rode in long convoys of exotic vehicles and had an air of invincibility around him. But the IG said when his men went to arrest him, he bolted through the back door, never to be seen again. The Senate lashed out at the Presidency for allegedly shielding Maina. In fact, Senate President David Mark asked the executive to choose between the Senate and Maina. At a point, people were hired to protest in his support as he claimed to be suffering from persecution.

    The missing billions are yet to be found and the Senate warrant is yet to be discharged. The hell raising is all over. Now there are calls for Maina’s return. Lucky guy. He can even sue for defamation or be magnanimous to just let go, saying: “I’ve forgiven all.” Will Maina be reinstated?

    A new helmsman has taken charge at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). I watched the other day as former Group Managing Director Andrew Yakubu handed over to the new man, Joseph Dawha, who was all smiles.

    As he took the reins, observers were wondering how long Dawha, who looks so simple and naïve, would last on the job. As of the last count, the corporation has had five managing directors in less than five years. It was not clear why Yakubu had to go. Sources said he was fired for irreconcilable differences – whatever that means – with the minister, Mrs Diezani Alison- Madueke, who is yet to clear herself of the allegation that she spent N10b on chartered flights. Instead of laying the facts bare, the woman rushed to the court to stop a plan to probe her. The NNPC is also accused of holding back some $10b oil revenue from the federation account, an allegation many seem to have forgotten after its champion, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, mounted the throne as Emir of Kano – against all odds.

    Many have called for Mrs Alison-Madueke’s sack, but the more they cry the stronger she gets. Researchers may be lucky one day to stumble on her staying power so that top managers will learn a lesson or two on how to remain unfazed, unruffled in a most hostile situation as she has been in.

    The police chief’s job is as risky as it is exciting. How does he convince the average policeman that corruption should not be a way of life? Doesn’t the policeman on the street think that the boss is even more corrupt?  How should the police react to the strange crimes that are fast becoming part of our lives. A man was arrested last week in Edo for sleeping with a dog. With what offence will he be charged? Assault? Indecency? Will  witnesses come up to testify against the suspect? The owner of the dog has disowned the animal. If he had not, wouldn’t the police have charged him with negligence? Or for being an accessory to indecent conduct?

    Inspector-General Suleiman Abba was laughing hysterically as he visited the Villa after his appointment, just like Adamawa Acting Governor Umar Fintiri, who showed up at the PDP secretariat in Abuja after former Governor Murtala Nyako’s impeachment to announce: “I have delivered!”.

    Abba spoke about his men’s preparation for the Osun election, saying: “ In fact, my advice is this, if you don’t have any business with Osun elections, just don’t go there because the law will catch up with you.” Was the IG preparing the ground for the massive rights abuses that characterised that exercise that was no election but a war against the peaceful but definitely not timid people of Osun?

    Abba promised to roll out in one week a strategy against Boko Haram and other violent crimes. We are still waiting?

    When will professionals begin to get their dues? Teachers. Doctors. Engineers. Reporters. Lawyers. Drivers. Printers. When will they have that satisfaction that will keep them at work without thinking of dumping their careers for politics?

    BAD SIGN FROM THE MILITARY

    RE we still fighting Boko Haram? A soldier has just told the BBC that, at least, 40 of his colleagues would refuse order to deploy. “Soldiers are dying like fowls,” he said, adding that “the army is not ready to fight Boko Haram”. The anonymous soldier complained about not having enough weapons and ammunition. Armoured cars are old, he alleged. Defence spokesman Brig.-Gen. Chris Olukolade believes the soldier must be a deserter.

    The other day, there was mutiny in Borno State. The soldiers involved were court-martialled. Women have been reported to have cried out that their men were being sent to battle with obsolete equipment. And now this. The Chief of Army Staff has, however, warned against murmuring, reminding all that the penalty for mutiny – the refusal to obey orders by a superior or someone in authority – is death.

    Nobody knew that Boko Haram would last this long. In many states, the military are pursuing armed robbers. President Goodluck Jonathan insists, against counsel of elders and experts, on drafting soldiers for elections. Many believe this is to give his party, PDP, the cover to overwhelm its opponents and manipulate the process.

    Fatigue seems to be setting in. When the military are overstretched, ill-equipped, ill-motivated and demystified, they may some day refuse to fight. Let’s pray it doesn’t get to that level. If it does –God forbid – we all know where to lay the blame. Don’t we?

  • Professor Tunji Dare at 70

    Professor Tunji Dare at 70

    I missed attending the lecture and the book presentation and the merriment surrounding Tunji Dare’s attainment of three score and ten years. Welcome to the group which I joined two years ago. Age sometimes creeps on one and one is sometimes amazed about how old one is. When I celebrated my 70th birthday, it was with mixed feelings. I was grateful to God for being with me all these years and I was also wondering how fast these years have moved. I did not feel old but now, I have to act my age, I am sure Tunji must be feeling the same way. Radicalism and old age do not seem to go very well together. A radical or a revolutionary old man would be a curious combination and perhaps a misuse of words. Those of us who felt we were radicals when we were young can no longer lay claim to radicalism of any sort at our age. But since we are not dead yet, we must continue to speak out like Tunji Dare. So my dear brother, do not relent in campaigning for a country that we can all be proud of. I recently bumped into Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, distinguished former Nigerian foreign minister and UN diplomat in Abuja. He jokingly said that he was nominated as a member of the on-going national conference under the category of elder statesmen. He said he told his wife that he is now an elder statesman in Nigeria and his wife asked him to behave as an elder from now on and no more fooling around! But this does not mean that if we see anything wrong in our country we should not point it out no matter whose ox is gored. I was particularly delighted when I read in the newspapers, the comment of Cardinal John Onaiyekan of the Roman Catholic Church asking those in government not to see criticism of their roles as amounting to lack of patriotism and that people in government and those in opposition do not have a monopoly of patriotism. In other words, all of us have a stake in this country and as long as we wobble on in spite of our age as a state, those of us who have opportunity to speak out must not shirk our responsibility. Our responsibility is to Nigeria and not to any particular regime. If people like Tunji Dare and the rest of us keep quiet in the face of tyranny and bad government, we would have died many times before our death. Sometimes the coarseness of our criticisms is directly proportionate to the bad governance prevailing in the land.

    Tunji Dare has paid his dues as a journalist, a teacher, and a tribune of the people and the voice of the voiceless. In the satirical style with which he writes, he manages to send serious messages to those in power in hilarious ways without offence. Whenever I get my newspapers on the day he writes, I am usually anxious to see what he has written on and to sit back and enjoy the wisdom of his prose. Tunji Dare is certainly the best journalist employing satire to deliver his message and his punches. Even before meeting him physically, I already thought I knew him because of his writing.

    I first met him at an intellectual level when the late Nelson Mandela came to Nigeria and the University of Lagos and the then Vice-Chancellor of Lagos, Professor Nurudeen Alao asked me to prepare a citation for the honorary degree the university was going to confer on Mandela. I did not know that he had also asked Tunji Dare to do the same thing. After both of us had submitted our drafts, he then asked Tunji Dare to come to me so that we could merge our two citations. Tunji Dare as self-abnegating as ever, said my draft was more than adequate and that there was no need to merge the two and that he would publish what he had written in The Guardian and this was precisely what we did. I did not train as a journalist and I make no pretence to literary ability. On a jocular note, I remember a professor of English reading my autobiography some years ago and telling me that he was surprised that I can write well. I laughed and told him that I thought as a professor of History, I ought to be able to write proper English. In fact most of the best writers of English language are people with my academic background.

    Tunji Dare comes from Kogi State. He is a Yoruba man from that state and he is not ashamed to call himself a Yoruba man unlike some of his compatriots from that part of Nigeria who say they are Okun which I always find very funny because okun is a greeting in some parts of Ekiti, Kwara and Kogi and what it means is “Hello” or “How are you?” But apparently for political advantage of belonging to the north especially when belonging to the north carries huge advantage of jobs, political positions and power. On the other hand, associating with the Yoruba in the south was regarded as a disadvantage. It is like a Hausa man from Niger State, instead of saying he is a Hausa man he says he is Sannu which sometimes the Ijesha people derisively use to refer to the Hausa people. I hope that no group of people in Nigeria should feel so powerless to the point of having identity crisis; there is no need for the Yoruba in Kogi to call themselves Okun people. More grease to your elbow, Tunji. You are not an old man as far as I am concerned; you should continue to write with all the emphasis at your command and to make your views on the future of Nigeria known as you have done in the past. Who knows what the future will bring. And in the whirligig of time, some of your views may become prescription for this sick and doddering country. May God continue to be with you Tunji, may He continue to enlarge your coast. Speak out, and speak out loud. God did not create us for fear, rather He created us to dominate our environment. Your people are known for their intrepidity and you are a typical representative of the upright, courageous and truthful Yoruba in the periphery who have had to hold their own against all odds in order to survive and have survived very well.

  • The hood and the monk

    They are never in short supply for those who need their service. Sycophants are always there for the picking of  those in power. Their tribe is so large that you do not need much to get them to do your bidding. They are 10 for N1 or even cheaper than that depending on your bargaining power. At times, you may not need to pay them, just give them food  and booze and the job is done.

    To the larger society, sycophants constitute a nuisance, but to those who use them, they are the best thing to ever happen to mankind.  Those in power like to be surrounded by sycophants while at the same time   pretending that they do not have need for such people. Sycophants thrive on mischief.  They deceive a leader into believing that he is the all-in-all; that there is no other person like him and that without him the country would go burst. The late Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha, was made to believe that without him, Nigeria will crumble. But, 16 years after his death, Nigeria is standing gidigba.

    Since we like those who massage  our egos,  leaders generally  are easily taken in by such talks. When they hear such statements, their heads swell and  they  grin from ear to ear, while asking : ”is that so?”  Of course, the response is usually : ”it is so,  your excellency,  without you, there will be no Nigeria. So, you must remain in office forever”. These sycophants, these friends of  any government in power are at it again. They have started playing on the intelligence of President Goodluck Jonathan just  as they did to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former military president Gen Ibrahim Babaginda and the late Gen Abacha, among others.

    Last Saturday, a group, the Transformation Agenda of Nigeria (TAN), kicked off its campaign to get the President to declare his second term ambition. It is not  a hidden fact that Jonathan is interested  in a second term. Want to bet? He will run for election  next year. If he does not run, I will go into exile, to borrow the words of those who in the past prevailed on some of our past leaders to run or they will become citizens of other countries if those leaders did not heed their call.

    Knowing that Jonathan will run next year whether heavens fall or not, TAN does not need to go into all these pains to organise rallies to beg him to do so. It reminds one of the rallies held all over the country in the Abacha days by one misguided youth called Daniel Kanu. Where is he now? Despite his father’s stupendous wealth, the boy was misled into dipping his hands into a matter bigger than him. No wonder, he ended up the way he did. Kanu was used by politicians, who stood to gain from his ill-conceived project.

    The Youth Earnestly Ask for  Abacha (YEAA) so-called one-million man march in Abuja was well funded from within and outside government.  The five  existing parties then also urged the late Gen Abacha to  transmute from a military to a civilian leader to prevent Nigeria from collapse. What a cheek!  All the  parties adopted him as their consensus candidate even when he did not indicate interest in the post  nor was he a  card carrying member of any of the parties. No doubt, Kanu was suffering from youthful exuberance, but what  do we say of the old men and women who saw nothing wrong in picking the late Abacha as their parties’ standard bearer despite not being their member. That was how low we sunk as a nation under his administration.

    TAN is following that path. The only difference is that  Jonathan is a politician, who is interested in running, while the late Abacha was a general, who was interested in running but could not come out to declare his intention. He preferred to do it through proxies like Kanu, the United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP), Congress for Nigeria Citizen (CNC), National Centre Party of Nigeria (NCPN), Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) and Grassroots Democratic Movement (GDM), which were the parties in existence then. Of the lot, GDM tried to stand its ground but its voice could not be heard in the cacophony created by the other parties and Kanu that were hell bent on installing the late Abacha as president.

    We are walking the same road again with TAN’s planned  pro-Jonathan  rallies, the first of which was held in Awka, the Anambra State capital, last Saturday for the Southeast zone.  The next stop is this Saturday in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital for the Southwest. The Southsouth edition will hold on August 30 in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.  Minna, Niger State (Northcentral) – September 9; Gombe (Northeast) – September 20 and Kano (Northwest) – September 27. Without doubt, TAN has the government’s  backing  in engaging in this shenanigan. The group has the right to drum support for whoever it believes should lead the country, but it should be mindful of public sensibilities.

    Is the group reading the mood of the nation at all? Is this the time to embark on such a sensitive  campaign? The man at the centre of it all knows the implication of taking such a step at a time like this, hence he has kept mute on his ambition, to his apparent discomfiture. There is nothing the President may  desire most at this time than to tell the whole world that he is contesting next year’s  election, but his hands are tied by the problems besetting  the country. Although he fixed  this year for his declaration, he knows that it is inauspicious to make such a declaration now.

    What will he say to make Nigerians buy into the Jonathan-for-another-term project if he declares now with the prevailing insecurity and the yet to be rescued  over 200 abducted Chibok girls, who have been in captivity since April 14, among others?  What will he say are his achievements since he mounted  the saddle in 2010, following the death of former President Umaru Yar’ Adua? Only a president without a heart will make such a declaration at a period like this. Do not get me wrong, if Jonathan wishes to declare, he is free to do so, but he should do  first things first. Let him bring back the Chibok girls and make the country safe, then he may remain in office for life, if he so wishes!

    It is a shame that TAN and its
    backers, including the gover
    nors and top government functionaries that  attended its Awka  rally last Saturday could lend themselves to such nonsense. Has the quest for power made them to lose their sense of reason? Is being in power more important to them than  the unity of Nigeria? It is a shame that those among them that we hold in high esteem could stoop so low. And for us to have ever thought that these were respectable people. Huh! Do they think it was appropriate to be part of such campaign at this period? If their children were among the abducted  Chibok  girls will they be out in the street campaigning for second term for Jonathan?

    Why are they doing this? The answer is obvious, they want to remain in the good books of Jonathan, who is just waiting for the right time to tell us that he will run in 2015. Our security agencies saw nothing wrong in the pro-Jonathan rally; they even provided security for the organisers. Will they act  the same way  if some other people organise an anti-Jonathan rally? If they disperse such a rally,  they will be  indirectly  telling Nigerians that they, too, are for Jonathan. We are told that the hood does not make the monk. How true. In truth, Jonathan does not need TAN or any amorphous group for that matter to do what he already has in mind – run for a second term.

    It is as clear as daylight, Jonathan will run in 2015, whether or not TAN and other  related  groups, goad him to do so.

  • Endless quibbling by Oodua siblings

    As a people of culture the Yoruba people are conservative but futuristic. To the extent that they invest heavily on the future they are often described as progressives with great value placed on peaceful change. For them, power is acquired often for the service of the people. Intrigue is a common feature among the people because of individual’s feeling of self-worth and value placed on family name which started to wane with the advent liberal participatory democracy. As siblings competed as political adversaries, nothing was to be the same again. Even the hallowed positions of the obas, the guardian of the peoples culture became threatened .as the new emergent political elite became more desperate. Thus today, the current Ooni of Ife whose father the Olubuse1 told the British hegemonic powers in 1903 that ‘an Oba no matter how powerful cannot wear a crown if his father did not wear one’ has since crowned all the Baales of Ife quarters including that of Modakeke that had engaged Ife in two devastating wars in the last 40 years. The seed of discord was sowed by politicians who in the name of democracy and quest for votes discouraged the Modakekes from paying taxes on Ife farm-land which was then the economic mainstay of Ife elite. The Ooni, who in 1931 when seniority crisis erupted between the Alaafin of Oyo and the Oba Ado as the Oba of Benin was then known, told the colonial powers that the latter was number two while the former was number three. The Ooni’s quibbling children have since challenged their father’s supremacy. When the Alaafin threw his own challenge not too long ago, there was an MKO Abiola, a wealthy powerful politician who had just acquired the all important Oyo chieftaincy-title of- ‘Are Onakankafo’ on hand to nudge him on. Abiola was to turn history on its head when he publicly said, ‘we have heard of Oyo Empire but never an Ife empire’. The Alaafin himself has since been challenged by the Oba of Ogbomoso who as late as 1903 was addressed as Baale of Ogbomoso.

     

    But beyond the internal intrigue, what has prolonged the nightmare of the Yoruba is their involvement in national politics witch pitched them against other Nigerian ethnic groups at different levels of cultural development. Today the Yoruba bear the brunt of an unworkable Nigeria project. Their attempt to develop along their own line of national aptitude was resisted by other dominant ethnic groups and past successive attempts to forge a national alliance to move the nation forward ended in disaster.

    Awo’s attempt to replicate  his achievements in the West  at the centre in order to move the nation forward was resisted by the forbears of the current beneficiaries of today’s anarchy, who clamped him into prison swearing he would be ‘too old by the time he comes out to question how we run Nigeria’. Akintola’s attempt to cut a deal to remain in power against the will of his people following a sanction for anti-party offences by his party leaders equally ended in disaster.  MKO Abiola who was forgiven and rehabilitated after his initial betrayal of the progressive forces that provided him with a scholarship to study accountancy in London secured a pan Nigeria mandate after an election rated as the most credible in the nation’s history in 1993. The result was annulled by the reactionary forces. He spent his four years term in prison and died protecting the mandate he was freely given.

    Bola Ige was an outstanding Nigerian as well as a Yoruba irredentist who out of a ‘feeling of self-worth’ decided to spite his Yoruba cult of elders by joining a much despised Obasanjo at the centre. The mix adventure encouraged by Obasanjo out of mischief ended in brutal assassination of Bola Ige in his bedroom by those suspected to be agents or reactionary forces he chose to dine with, albeit briefly. Obasanjo, undoubtedly a progressive in view of his futuristic policies as military head of state, and as a two term president, thought he was smarter than his Yoruba compatriots as he self-conceitedly boasted he had achieved on a platter of gold what others fought for while he was a mere bare-footed secondary school student. He however now has enough time to reflect on his intervention in the Nigerian project.

    In the Nigerian unworkable enterprise, the Yoruba has been the greatest loser. A people that have been producing graduates and PhD holders since the mid 1800 have lost the initiative to even plan the education of their children. The national average of success in the last WAEC was put at 33%. With the virtual collapsed infrastructure which has led to the flight of multi-nationals that were once the strength of the zone, the Yoruba has lost the command of the economy now controlled by smugglers and importers of labour of other societies while our children roam the streets for non-available jobs. Today, the Yoruba that is not even represented in this administration because of siblings quibbling has nothing to fight over, as against the north and the east that have identified what they want from the nation. The former has even threatened to go to war over oil revenue sharing and the latter as survivalist with 60% of their compatriots spread over the country want the indigene-ship clause removed from the constitution. Ironically the two dominant ethnic groups who have often act as if their only stakes is what they can get out of the country have jointly ruled the nation since independence.

    Now that those the Yoruba have invested heavily on in recent times are defecting back to PDP that has for 15 years called darkness light, I think it is time the Oodua siblings stop quibbling.

    Last Sunday, Nuhu Ribadu, one-time AC presidential candidate and a pillar of APC defected to PDP claiming no party has monopoly of thieves. He now wants to be governor of his Adamawa State.  Like Atiku Abubakar who the Yoruba has equally invested on, Ribadu doesn’t seem to believe in anything. Pat Utomi, a presidential candidate several times over and a pillar of APC is said to have obtained his PDP nomination form from Delta. Like Ribadu, he now wants to be governor of his oil-rich Delta State. Ali Modu Sheriff, two-time governor of Borno State and one time senator, widely demonized by PDP as the father of Boko Haram has now been welcomed by PDP with open arms. Last week, the cream of Igbo from the South-east attended a Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) rally where President Jonathan was endorsed for 2015. Before then, TAN had been spending money like water to make spurious claims of President Jonathan’s achievements.

    These peddlers of fraudulent claims along with respected Igbo leaders and revered members of their communities such as Ribadu, Atiku Abubakar and Pat Utomi are the partners the Yoruba have been condemned to work with in addressing the nation’s national question.

    Now with the elders of quibbling Oodua siblings hobnobbing with Mimiko, Daniel, Omisore, Fayose,  men who have not demonstrated they have the capacity for a vision for our people,  as desperate federal government unleash rascals, and characters who move around with  hooded armed soldiers intimidating our people, the only choice left for our current authentic political leaders is to stop dissipating energy on those who do not share their common vision of society and turn inwards as their forbears did  in the 50s. The petty wars going on in Ogun, Oyo,  Edo and other parts of the South-west  must stop in the interest of our people  If  it is impossible to have a common vision of society with those at different levels of cultural development, it is a challenge of present privileged Yoruba political leaders to combine the lesson of our past with their today’s activities to fashion out a vision of tomorrow for our people.

  • Being realistic about Nigeria

    Most old folks of my age don’t surf the internet, mostly because we don’t know how to do it. I am one of those who don’t know how to do it. But occasionally I stumble upon some things that have been said on the internet concerning my Gbogun Gboro column.  Recently, I stumbled on this that someone wrote: This Gbogun Gboro must be an old Yoruba person who is very knowledgeable about the Yoruba nation, about other Nigerian nations, and about Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria, his is often the most realistic voice out there. I appreciate that comment. I prefer it to the comment by another writer who wrote that Gbogun Gboro doesn’t ever seem to see good things about Nigeria.

    Sure, I see good things about Nigeria. I have known a lot of good things about Nigeria. When I went to school as a young boy, our Nigeria, just over 30 years old at that time, was the great excitement that ran through all our school learning. Nigeria made us dizzyingly proud. Children tend to create childish myths, and we created many about our Nigeria. For instance, we “knew” that our Nigerian football team was the best in the world, and that some members of that team were so good shooters that they could rip goal-keepers apart with their shots. We even had stories of how, during a tour of England, our national team simply terrified English teams. There was a litany which we used to recite proudly: Nigeria is the largest producer of groundnuts in the world; Nigeria is the largest producer of palm oil in the world; Nigeria is the largest producer of cocoa in the world; Nigeria is the largest producer of tin in the world. We were sure that our Nigeria was going to become the greatest country in the world – and we were eager to get ready to serve her with all our might. Nigeria was an intoxicating possession.

    For the most part, the dream and the pride grew as we rose higher and higher in the educational system. In my secondary school years, Chief Awolowo’s generation of leaders in the Western Region turned on an incredibly bright leadership light, and made our region “first in Africa” in most areas of development and enterprise. We could only think that the rest of our Nigeria would catch up soon, and that that was the direction our country was destined to go. Later, at the University College, Ibadan (UCI), the peak of the educational system, we students lived, learned, dreamed, and walked the earth like on-coming servants of one of the greatest countries of the immediate future of the world. If any among us did or said something shoddy or unbecoming, we politely chastised him with, “Arise, gentleman”. Shakespeare wrote in one of his sonnets that it is at “heaven’s gate” that the lark sings; we students of UCI lived in the confident hope that it was on top of the world’s highest mountains that Nigeria and Nigerians would soar.

    In those wonderful years in the life of our country, I had the privilege of representing UCI and Nigerian students in a number of international conferences – in Africa and other parts of the world. Again and again, I had the awesome experience of standing face to face with important leaders of the world as they said, “Young Nigerian, we hope that you Nigerians are aware that your country holds the key to Africa’s future”. We Nigerian student leaders made it the rule among us to be humble and cautious in our statements before the word; but even so, one of our most senior student leaders once allowed himself to say in a conference in Switzerland, “It is whithersoever my country Nigeria goes that Africa will go”. Though we later rebuked him in private for his gaff, we nevertheless believed (nay, we knew) that he was right.

    Unhappily, very unhappily, virtually none of the great dreams of Nigeria has had fulfilment. Since independence, our Nigeria has declined relentlessly. From the enormous wealth of our country’s resources, we have succeeded in producing very sordid poverty for our people. Even our federal government admits that about 70% of Nigerians live in the awful condition classified as “absolute poverty”, and that the percentage continues to increase. Some estimates have it that some 78% of Nigeria’s youths are unemployed, and that that percentage continues to increase. For decades, Nigeria has been classified, year after year, as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. As a result of violent crimes, Nigeria is classified as one of the most unsafe counties in peace time in the world. Year in, year out, countless thousands of Nigerians die as a result of inter-ethnic conflicts.  Year in, year out also, countless thousands of Nigerians die from religious conflicts. Today, a most extreme Islamic fundamentalist sect holds a whole region of Nigeria in its grip, accounting in the past five years for some 12,000 violent deaths, according to official estimates. Nigeria has become the home of hopelessness, crookedness and unrelieved vileness in human and group relationships.

    A recently held National Conference will place its report before our President today. Many of us are congratulating ourselves for some of its fairly reasonable decisions. However, some of its other decisions – like the decision to splinter our federation into 54 states – certainly will doom the more reasonable decisions to failure. And the heavy issues that the conference did not touch represent a preservation of a devastating part of the status quo. The conference does not touch such issues as corruption, poverty, unemployment, crimes, spreading inter-ethnic hostility and conflicts, and religious terrorism. It tells a horrible story that this is the best we can produce from a National Conference. And that horrible story gives a hard new emphasis to the question, “Should we continue to insist on being one country, or should we consider other paths to our future?”

    These are the reasons why it is hard for me to be otherwise than toughly realistic about Nigeria. I have seen Nigeria flying to the gates of heaven, only to see her turn around and plunge down to the gates of hell. It is perhaps permissible for younger Nigerians, who did not see the beauty and pride that used to belong to Nigeria, to accept today’s wretchedness and even continued decline. I, in contrast, cannot resist trying to find the true explanation – and that is where my being realistic comes from.

    While trying to find explanations, I must reject the explanation often proposed by those who despise the Blackman in the world – the explanation that Nigeria’s decline and failure are the product of inherent or genetic faults in Black people and in us Nigerians. We are not inherently or genetically incompetent or crooked peoples. The builders of our various civilizations and states were by no means incompetent or crooked. The trouble, I believe, is most probably from the nature and making of the country which was forced upon us. Being together in one county like Nigeria does not seem to be the way we really wish to live. Doesn’t our dignity as humans demand that we should realistically consider this?

  • Beyond lip service…

    There is no perfect nation to be born yet Nigeria is the worst nation to be born, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report. No thanks to the Economist magazine’s sister publication, the Nigerian newborn may arrive knowing he has come where the sun dies everlastingly for the bliss of the fig. The EIU report ranks Nigeria 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its Where-to-be-born index.

    Predictably, the report has inspired and incited all manners of conspiracy theories and affirmation of doom; foremost newspapers and columnists have written editorials affirming the report and the poor fate of the Nigerian child; child advocacy groups have regrouped to re-strategize in order to fleece international children foundations off grants that would never get to its touted recipient, the Nigerian child.

    Within the din of socio-politically correct and self-righteous vituperation, a crucial voice dies slowly, painfully but certainly; it is the voice that goes to bat for the Nigerian child. Foremost newspapers may have affirmed the EIU’s claims but very few newspapers would publish as their cover stories, the plight of teenage sex workers or child urchins across the country, unless there is a mass death involving the minors. Such media fare is never strong enough to upstage news of political party intrigues and permutations. And if you examine closely the child rights campaigns, you will find that they have always been meal tickets to duplicitous and avaricious advocacy gurus and groups.

    Nobody actually speaks for the newborn. Nobody speaks for the Nigerian child. And nobody truly speaks to the only human force capable of exciting the future in which the Nigerian newborn may arrive assured of a prosperous fate and a better life; the Nigerian youth.

    There is a tragedy inherent in our customary lamentation every time our conscience is roused with a damning report and as it has become customary of us, more racist politicians and activists have suggested that we split and go our separate ways touting it as the only solution to our league of extraordinary problems.

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

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

    It’s all dirty, greedy politics; the separatists want the youth to fly the flags of their dream nations, they want everybody to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows, “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” They call anyone that’s anti-war and anti-secession, “pacifist,” “traitor” or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage. Then they promise the youth a prosperous future and better fate under their dream nation. Consequently, youth that ought to know better buy into such farce and they all begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become.

    Truly, it is a sad thing for us as a nation to be afflicted by such youth whose eyes cannot see and intellect cannot detect the hideous manifestations of the vulpine intellect characteristic of the Nigerian separatists. Thus the Nigerian youth wastes his passion recycling hackneyed criticisms and fomenting trouble in the name of all manners of political godfathers, minority group leaders, human rights activists, tribal rights activists, youth leaders to mention a few.

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

    Eventually, he grows into the prototypical average, disgruntled man on the street, who suddenly realizes in his twilight that he had squandered God’s greatest gifts to him, his intellect and talent – then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realizes that his miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a contemptible kobo.

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

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

    In contemporary Nigeria, it is incense for suspicious revolutionaries claiming to fight for the interests of Nigeria’s ethnic divides. In this there is nothing new; what is new and unpardonably offensive is the pretension of such characters to heartfelt sorrow, shared grief and relation in identity and ideal to the present sufferings of the Nigerian youth and breadlines.

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

    The process of re-sensitizing the youth away from the establishment of chaos and genocide advocated by the secessionists will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the current political order; however, this can only be achieved by the nation’s youth – who are unfortunately taken by the platitudes and poetics of Nigeria’s band of self-serving ruling class and racist emancipators.

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

    Many activists, youth leaders and self-acclaimed political heroes today have their wives and children safely tucked away in secure schools and sociopolitical climes overseas even as they goad impoverished and clueless youth at home to their doom.

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

    The current political separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of education and culture, if the youth could endeavour to be truly civilized. But such transformation calls for remarkable wisdom and tolerance.

    • To be continued…

  • Fani-Kayode, Osuntokun, scions of illustrious fathers

    As I watched Femi Fani-Kayode, and Akin Osuntokun swear by the name of Iyiola Omisore and PDP during a press briefing supervised by Musiliu Obanikoro, the minister of defence, to round-off PDP campaign for their candidate, in Osogbo last Thursday, the memories of yesterday brought the past to pain. It was like history repeating itself all over again. Their forebears, driven by passion for power employed similar tactics in the first republic. It only encouraged desperate federal government power mongers to impose a culture of impunity and a regime of injustice on the Yoruba people who by their culture always want the best for others as they want for themselves.

    But it must be admitted from the onset that minus their politics, the Fani-Kayodes and the Osuntokuns, as leading light in education are a pride of the Yoruba race and a gift to Nigeria. Femi’s great grandfather Rev. Emmanuel Adedapo Kayode earned Master of Arts (Durham) degree from Fourah Bay College, an arm of Durham University in 1885. His grandfather, Victor Adedapo Kayode earned a law degree from Cambridge University in 1921, and his brilliant father Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode, ‘born in London, bred in Lagos” (apology to Aiyekoto), like his illustrious father, earned a law degree coming on top of his class in Cambridge University in 1945. Femi the scion of an illustrious family is also a phenomenon. Born with a silver spoon in London, where he acquired all his education, he admitted feeling fulfilled for matching his father’s record in Cambridge.

    The Osuntokuns produced the late Professor Olukayode Osuntokun, a world celebrated neurologist, Prof Akinjide Osuntokun, a respected intellectual, eminent historian and  a diplomat, who was described by Dr Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State  during his recent 70th birthday celebration as “one of the greatest examples of the famed Ekiti integrity and honour”.

    Of course, there was Oduola Osuntokun, Akin’s father, a resourceful man and an Awo protégée who became a minister in his 30s and served without blemish between 1955 and 1963 when according to Akin, he “took sides with Akintola and stoically grappled with the negative fallouts attendant on this choice all his life”. He was an honest man who after serving as a minister for 10 years, returned home to become a school teacher to sustain his family   Akin himself, from his brilliance and exploits as a journalist, there can be no doubt he is a true scion of his illustrious forebears.

    Awo celebrated the brilliance of young Remi Fani-Kayode who rose rapidly from the leader of the youth wing of the Action Group to become the Assistant Secretary General of AG. He along with S. O. Ighodaro, E. O. Eyo, Adeyemi Lawson and S. G. Ikoku, teamed up with him to represent the Action Group at the 1957 London Constitutional Conference. But the late Olabisi Onabanjo, a veteran journalist alias Aiyekoto, who chronicled the events of the period, told us how Fani-Kayode took a gamble in 1959, when he joined NCNC as leader of opposition in the House. According to him, Fani-Kayode, “born in London, bred in Lagos, who went home only when ambition for political office was ripened”, lost the Ife Constituency 1 election in 1959 and lost the Ile Ife constituency in 1961. He thereafter embarked on a battle to bring down the regional government. Following the prosecution of some members of his militant youth wing for criminal activities in 1960, he called on the prime minister and the federal government to take over the West because of what he described as ‘breakdown of law and order’. He repeated the call in 1961 and in fact staged a walk-out in the House.

    His appeal to the federal government to take over the West finally found expression in 1962 when following the throwing of chairs by some NCNC sympathizers of embattled Premier SLA Akintola, the federal government declared an illegal state of emergency and clamped Awo and members of the ruling AG into detention. At the end of the emergency, Akintola was imposed as premier without election while Fani-Kayode became deputy premier. Emboldened by this act of injustice and impunity by the federal government, Fani-Kayode called the bluff of Yoruba voters by predicting that their new party, NNDP would win the 1965 regional election ‘whether the people voted for them or not’.

    They went on to award themselves a pyrrhic victory. According to Akin Osuntokun, “many of the NNDP candidates were returned unopposed because the candidatures of their opponents were invalidated fraudulently. Everyone knew that Akintola had stolen the election”.

    But the Yoruba, who sometimes first welcome evil perpetrators with talking drum, swore that those who sowed the wind would reap the whirlwind. When he was arrested in the wee hours of January 31, 1966 by the coup plotters, it was Fani-Kayode’s lot to lead the plotters to the premier’s lodge where he witnessed the brutal murder of SLA Akintola. He later relocated to London only to emerge in 1978 as a founding member of NPN. But the brilliant lawyer never again found the rhythm after becoming an accessory to the destruction of the ladder with which he climbed up.

    Aiyekoto, writing about Chief Remi Fani-Kayode in Daily Express of August 8, 1961, also says “he has the courage of a mischief maker and knows how to exploit a situation”. He, according to him first warmed himself to the hearts of the people through a series of powerful articles and later by fighting conservatism only to return to those he fought to get the limelight…” It was as if Aiyekoto was writing about the Femi, the scion of an illustrious father. Femi not too many seasons ago took on the gab of a Yoruba irredentist, dished out powerful articles to propagate and celebrate the values, character and integrity of his Yoruba people. As the nemesis of PDP in the South-west in the last two years, he even helped in building APC into a formidable opposition. But like his illustrious father did in 1959, he has now shifted his allegiance to the centre.

    Speaking at the said press briefing as if there was no yesterday, he boasted PDP would win the election. He went short of adding his illustrious father’s infamous phrase “whether the people voted for (NNDP) PDP or not”. He did not say why Omisore with all his celebrated character flaws is the leadership Osun State deserves. Obviously, like his late illustrious father, all that mattered was the raw power of the federal government who often fraudulently claim to know what the people want without asking them.

    Oduola Osuntokun was brilliant and honest, a man of character like most of his Ekiti compatriots of his day. He was the apple of Awo’s eyes. He was a trusted minister saddled with supervising the building of Bodija and Ikeja GRAs, the task he carried out without blemish. But in 1962, he betrayed his party and Awo. He teamed up with Akintola who Akin admitted in the above quote as having stolen the people’s mandate. He chose to take sides with injustice, a vice abhorred by his Ekiti people who according to Akin ended up burning the Osuntokun family houses in Okemesi.

    The only plausible explanation for an acclaimed man of culture and character to side with injustice is greed for power.  And now Akin has said publicly he has no regret embracing the politics of his illustrious father despite wise counsel from his respected uncles. And the only plausible explanation for a man of good breeding taking sides with those alleged to be deficit in honour, integrity and character is greed for power. His detractors for instance alleged he turned his back on AD to join Obasanjo because he couldn’t secure a senate ticket.

    Welcome. First Republic, lost through the perfidy of illustrious fathers, swept away for choosing to swim against the tide. It is a new dawn for their illustrious scions who think they can repeat the same mistake and get a different result. As the scions publicly identify with those who proclaim night as day, history repeats itself

  • Nigeria’s irreconcilable cultural differences

    The federal government’s management of the security for the recent gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun States has left us something big to ponder.  In both states, we witnessed a very massive mobilization of the military, the police and other security apparatchiks. We also witnessed the arrests of some politically active citizens, even before polling day in some cases. Some were reported to have been detained for some time –without charge.

    I will notdwell here on the motive of these actions. Understandably, members of parties other than the party in control of the federal government are angrily suspicious that the purpose was to rig the elections in the two states. And it is true that, in the distorted and crooked federation that Nigeria has become, part of the destructive culture proudly upheld by the federal establishment is to rig elections and cause disruption in all parts of Nigeria. I agree that that is a very major subject worthy of attention, but it is not my focus as I write this article today.

    As we have all watched the military, police and security forces in their bombardments of Ekiti and Osun states, one reality, among many, has stood out most sharply in my thoughts – namely, the cultural implications of these governmental brutalities in the homeland of the Yoruba people. Whether other Nigerian peoples choose to recognize it or not, brash, brutal, insensitive, and violent leadership and governance are very strange to the political culture and expectations of Yoruba people. I am not suggesting at all that those among us whose party controls the federal power would not have been happy that their big party-men from Abuja came with all the coercive forces of the federal government to help their electoral efforts in their state. What I say is that the Yoruba nation and its people, as a people, have, in all essence, long graduated beyond over-coercive and brutal governance in their history – long before the coming of the British or of Nigeria.

    For many centuries before the coming of the British, the Yoruba had evolved a political system characterized by respect for the sovereignty of the people; the right of the people to select their rulers and chiefs; the right of the common people to be respected by their rulers, chiefs  and leaders; the duty of the rulers, chiefs and leaders to uphold accountability, dignity and integrity in leadership and governance; and the right of the people to speak freely in matters concerning their community and their government. Among most other peoples ruled by kings, a deceased king is automatically succeeded by his child, and his subjects have no say in the matter. Unlike them all, we Yoruba established the right to select our kings. We also established the right, and the system, for peacefully removing unpopular kings.  Unlike kings in most other cultures, our kings were not autocrats; they had to work with councils of chiefs. Unlike most other peoples, we Yoruba people established powerful agencies that watched over the conduct of our rulers, our chiefs and our prominent citizens, agencies that had the power to seriously penalize even our highest rulers or chiefs or prominent citizens for infringements of their high codes of honour.

    Unlike most peoples in the world, we Yoruba traditionally give a lot of scope to our women. In our traditional family compounds, the influence of the women (the wives of the men born to the family) was considerable. In the larger community, every Yoruba kingdom had different kinds of women chieftaincies.  Although we usually talk as if royal thrones were only for men, there is probably no Yoruba kingdom that never had a woman on the throne in our history. Even in cults that are supposed to be for men only (like the Egungun cult), we Yoruba almost invariably established positions for some women in the top leadership. Above all, traditionally, Yoruba women commanded a large share in their country’s wealth – much more than one would find among the women of most other peoples in the world. This is because Yoruba women controlled almost all the trade of their country. As traders also, Yoruba women freely took trade throughout their country, as well as to most parts of Black Africa, and established trading colonies as far away as today’s Sudan, Mali, and the valley of the Senegal. They made the Yoruba language the language of trade in many distant parts of West Africa. Among the Yoruba literate elite today, women are very influential.

    As a result of all this history and culture, the average Yoruba person tends to have a high degree of self-worth, and a confident assurance that he or she may freely make his or her voice heard in the affairs of his or her community or nation. Collectively, we Yoruba desire to live in a situation in which we respect and honour our rulers, and they dutifully and decently respect us the common people.

    These are the fundamentals of Yoruba political behavior and Yoruba political expectations today. It is the reason why Yoruba people have usually shown themselves much more hostile to the Nigerian culture of election rigging since independence. We Yoruba cannot stand it when some big federal bosses come arrogantly to our states, presuming that their positions and power entitle them to manipulate and rig our elections, and fraudulently choose our state rulers for us.

    In fact we Yoruba are only barely tolerating Nigeria’s presidential system – the system in which a president operates as the almighty controller of all power, all resources, all localities, and all assets in Nigeria, and in which state governors operate as the controllers of all the rest of power and management in our states and show no respect to elected State legislators or even their own commissioners.  We are not used to being ruled by autocratic governments. What we are used to is a system of government characterized by collective and shared responsibility, mutual respect among high public officials, and a reliable culture of respect of government and leaders for us the people.

    In short, we Nigerians live in a cobweb of cultural differences that are essentially impossible to sort out. Almost every people in Nigeria feels, one way or other, that Nigeria is trampling rough-shod over them. And yet, as the trajectory of Nigeria’s existence powerfully shows, any hope that Nigeria can, or will, change its course is futile day-dreaming. We have now had a National Conference which we cannot claim to have been manipulated or wrecked by a President, and yet,  the total effect of its outcome is very likely to be a stronger federal establishment and weaker, and subordinate, federating units. The disease that has been killing Nigeria has been given greater power to kill.

    But hope is not lost – I mean hope of sensible systems of government, of better governments, of sensitive and patriotic leaders, of emerging crowds of skilled workers, entrepreneurs and business owners, and of rapidly expanding opportunities for all citizens. Reading what Nigerians write in the media these days, one cannot miss the growing desires for new and smaller countries in which these hopes can quickly become reality – countries carved out of Nigeria.