The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Niger Delta’s misguided youths

    We have no choice than to cut off your index finger and that of your wife since your family refused to play ball by paying the N30 million ransom. The two of you will have to live with that scar for the rest of your lives,” And the index fingers of the 84 year old pa Azun Asoya and that of his 55 years old wife were accordingly chopped off. Relishing such cruel and bestial act, the sick abductors of an octogenarian taunted: “Old man, it is like you don’t have enough blood in your veins. I expected to see lot of blood gushing out but it is just a little quantity. I guess you don’t eat well”.

    This is a chilling true life story of 2013 Nigeria. The scene was in Okpanam, a stone throw from Asaba, capital of oil rich Delta State. Even if these young men were on drug, one would have expected them to become sober after a day. But these misguided young men who were bent on reaping from where they did not sow were under the influence of something worse than drug- loss of human feeling arising from deprived proper parental upbringing. Otherwise, how does one explain that after this sordid act, these young men without any thought about their own parents, went ahead to keep an 84 year man and his wife in the thick Delta mangrove forest for another 14 days without the luxury of having a bath, going to toilet or changing their clothes?

    And to think they chose to place a ransom of N30m on an old man not known to have been part of Delta’s past administration led by those a British court described as ‘criminals in government house’ or known to have been a PDP contractor, defies logic. Even within the culture of barefaced looting of our resources by those in government which has come to characterize our society these past 14 years, it is still hard to imagine that these misguided young men did not see anything immoral forcing Pa Asoye’s struggling children to borrow N3.5m before securing freedom for their parents.

    This is a signal to descent to state of nature where life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’. The circumstances whereby criminals who openly boasted they work hand in glove with the police kept their kidnapped victims for 17 days, a stone throw from Asaba, the seat of government with the police as in other kidnapped cases remaining clueless, is a clear indication of government gradual loss of its rationale, which is the protection of life and property for which we traded our freedom.

    Yet we amuse ourselves insisting “We have reorganized the Nigerian Police Force and appointed a more dynamic leadership to oversee its affairs; improved its manpower levels as well as funding, training and logistical support; increased the surveillance capabilities of the Police and provided its air-wing with thrice the number of helicopters it had before the inception of the present administration”. But shouldn’t it be a source of concern to a government that throws money at every problem that the more money we pumped into the police, the more complex our security challenges become? For instance if we stop playing the ostrich of ‘kidnapping started in 2006 before the advent of the present administration’, what we discover is that the 63 kidnapped cases reported for 2006 and 2007 paled in significance to about 475 in 2011 and 500 in 2012. And for first half of 2013, even with almost half of the cases unreported, the Economist of London has claimed Nigeria had the most kidnapped attempts in the world followed by Mexico and Pakistan.

    In a recent lecture, Charles Soludo, the former CBN governor reminded us that ‘Over the last 20 years, every new Inspector General of Police (IG) has launched one special ‘operation’ or the other to signal his zero tolerance to crime. Over the same period, the size of the police force has more than tripled, its budget ballooned, and yet the state of insecurity worsens.’ Quoting from different sources, he says in spite of these huge investments, Nigeria is ranked the “kidnap-for-ransom capital of the world accounting for 25% of global kidnappings’. The Global Peace Index ranks Nigeria the sixth most dangerous African country to live in; KPMG ranks Nigeria the most fraudulent country in Africa; while the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Nigeria the ‘worst place to be born’ in 2013. The US Fund for Peace has, for three consecutive years, ranked Nigeria as the 14th failed state in the world (out of a total of 178 countries).” Soludo maintains that ‘Insecurity of life and property is at the heart of these worsening indices’.

    If the dividends of investment on the police is more crime as Soludo seems to aver, there is obviously much more fundamental problem with the police. The inference one can draw from the lamentation of Soludo who also told us he had as CBN governor forced The Bankers Committee to procure about 25 armoured personnel carriers for the police, arranged foreign training for officer in the US, Israel and UK, is that we are just moving in a vicious cycle by refusing to accept that what is required is decentralization of the corrupt and highly politicized Nigeria police as presently constituted. Let us for a moment imagine the possible effect of a Delta police command answerable to the governor and manned by Delta indigenes who are masters of their own language and custodians of their people’s culture on the 17 days travails of Pa Asoya marooned in a jungle not far from the state capital.

    But beyond the police, the Asoya case questions the new culture of reaping where people did not sow that today defines activities of some leaders and youths of the Niger Delta who justify oil theft, stealing by leaders and non execution of contracts under the usual excuse “it is our oil money”. For instance embedded in most of the works of J P Clark, poetry and plays is the theme of hard work. The culture of reaping where people did not sow is a new creation of Delta elite that has failed to prepare the youths for the challenges of adulthood.

    It is on record that the political and intellectual elite of Niger Delta armed, lionized and groomed the youths to become parasites since 1999. Today many of the half educated Niger youths with no visible trade receive free money from government. They like the political and some intellectual elite live like parasites. It is obvious those who subjected Pa Asoya to such indignity see no difference between leaders’ looting of their common wealth and youths raping of private individuals.

    Death penalty or arrest of traditional leaders for the sins of kidnappers is merely attacking the symptoms. It is a battle of the mind. Youths must be made to know they have to invest in their own future through hard work. As the Yoruba will say – hard work is the therapy for poverty; the common theme that runs through most of Pa J P Clark’s literary work-poetry and play – is a culture of hard work among the various nationalities that make up the Niger Delta. Clark in spite of a privileged background went fishing in the Niger Creeks with his uncles. He literarily raised himself up through hard work.

    Like Pa J P Clark, many other successful Nigerians once followed their parents to work in their farms. And today many of them have unemployed youths who would not hurt a fly. It is time the Delta parasitic political elite who gave their youths the illusion they also can live as parasites to see the assault on Pa Asoya and many other self-made men of Niger Delta origin as a call for a new orientation for current youths who have no secured future.

  • Rivers of bombs and bullets

    It all started as a battle for supremacy. Who controls what in the oil-rich Rivers State? Politicians are ever interested in power. They want to control everything and everybody, even a sitting governor in his own state. This is the situation Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi has found himself in the past two years or so. We can understand when politicians try to grab power anyhow, but what do we say of those who want to imitate politicians just because they are married to a politician?

    Amaechi’s major headache is not his fellow politicians but the wife of the president, Dame Patience Jonathan, who feels that the governor must kowtow to her just because she is from Rivers State. As a Rivers indigene, the First Lady, as a matter of right, should be interested in what is going on in her state. Her interest, mind you, should centre on how she can contribute to its betterment and not to disturb its peace.

    Unfortunately, Dame Patience is more interested in the politics of Rivers than in its development. She wants to be the de facto governor and turn Amaechi to her puppet. The governor is resisting that move. He says he is not ready to be a figurehead, but to serve and exercise the powers of a governor, who was duly elected by the people. For standing up to the First Lady, Amaechi has been called names. He is said to be stubborn and a wife beater. The second charge the governor will address himself.

    But if I may ask, what is bad in being stubborn in standing up for your right? Should a man act stupid in the face of oppression? Should he keep quiet when his right is being trampled upon? If the First Lady were in Amaechi’s shoes will she allow herself to be dictated to? What is happening in Rivers is not healthy at all. Everyday, it is one crisis or the other and all because certain people led by Dame Patience want to be in charge.

    If she is so hungry for the governor’s office, then she should try her luck at the poll in the next election? To that, I am sure her loyalists will say as the president’s wife she cannot do any other job than being first lady. Good, if that is the case, why does she want to govern Rivers through the back door by making things difficult for Amaechi? Or why did she accept her appointment as a permanent secretary in Bayelsa, her husband’s home state, where she was working before providence smiled on the family, if she knew her hands are really full as first lady.

    Since her fortunes changed, Dame Patience’s outlook about life should also have changed. But, no, she still finds time to hanker after little things; things, which naturally should not attract her attention because of what God has done for her. All she needs do by virtue of her position is to court Amaechi and not to seek to ride roughshod over him because she is first lady. We have had many first ladies and we never saw them fight their state governors as Dame Patience is doing for political space.

    When two elephants fight, the saying goes, the ground suffers. This is what is happening in the Rivers debacle. The people are the ones bearing the brunt of the political face off between the Jonathans and Amaechi. The president, naturally, is supporting his wife. Since the president has many people looking up to him for survival, these people have joined the fray on his family’s side. These are ministers, members of his party and lawmakers in the national and state assemblies.

    These people are supporting the first family not because what the Jonathans are doing is good, but because it is in their political interest to do so. This is why there may be no end to the crisis until probably after Amaechi leaves office in 2015. My fear is that after he leaves office, they may still be hunting him all over the place. Now, Amaechi enjoys immunity. Once he leaves office and no longer enjoys immunity, they are likely to come after him, with allegations of certain illegalities committed while in office. Whether they will be able to prove their allegations is a different matter, but they will harass him to no end.

    For now, the people cannot sleep with their two eyes closed because they don’t know what may happen next in this fight of goliaths. The police’s role in the matter leaves much to be desired. Police Commissioner Joseph Mbu has so far shown that there is no love lost between him and Amaechi. Mbu does not see anything good in Amaechi and if he has his way he is ready to take the governor in today. The police, which should be the mediator in this matter, is clearly partisan. They are tilted toward the side of those against Amaechi and this is obvious from what is going on in the Rivers State House of Assembly.

    In the Assembly, which has not been able to sit for months now, we have 25 members, who are on Amaechi’s side, seven others are supporters of the Supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, who has virtually become Dame Patience’s handbag. Under the aegis of his Grassroots Democratic Initiative (GDI), Wike and his cohorts want to turn their state upside down to satisfy their mistress. Democracy is a game of numbers. With 25 members, the Speaker Otelemaba Dan-Amachree – led group deserves the protection of the police.

    But what t do we have? The police are on the side of the minority. They have stopped the majority from sitting following a court order despite having extracted an undertaking from the group to be of ‘’good behavior’’. Harry Bipi, who is parading himself as speaker, and the leader of the seven-man group refused to sign such an undertaking. What should that have told the police? It should have told them that the group is a spoiler. It is aiming at a breakdown of law and order so that in the words of Etche Local Government chief Reginald Okwuoma, ‘’a state of emergency can be declared in the state’’.

    Okwuoma’s statement followed the bombing of a high court in Okehi, which in his council, on Monday, hours after a similar incident at another high court in Ahoada East Local Government Area of the state. Can we say the council chief is blowing hot air? Is it not obvious from goings-on that the central government has some evil intentions concerning the state? The bombing of those courts within hours of each other speaks volumes about the government. Yet, they are denying that there is no ‘’political watch list’’. Let them say that to the marines.

  • The amalgamation and its enemies

    In recent times, a lot has been written and said about the amalgamation of British protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Colony of Lagos with British protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The reason for this recent interest in what the then Governor General Sir Frederick Lugard did is because it was a century ago that he translated his political memoranda into political reality. After retiring from Nigeria and having been ennobled as a Lord, he settled down to reflect on his mission in Africa in what he called the Dual Mandate which was subsequently published. The way he explained the Dual Mandate was that tropical colonies in the British Empire were acquired for two purposes, namely; for British commercial interest and secondly, for spreading western civilization. This is not an original idea because Joseph Chamberlain, the industrialist from Birmingham, who in the 1890s emerged as Secretary of State for the colonies had justified acquisition of colonial territories on the grounds that even though they might not have been useful initially, they were some kind of investment which British enterprise could make profitable in the near or distant future. The second idea of spreading western civilization has been earlier enunciated in the book “The White man’s Burden” written by an imperialist writer Rudyard Kipling.

    It is common knowledge that the reasons for the amalgamation were economic rather than political. The Southern protectorate was economically viable because it derived a lot of revenue from customs duties largely levied on what was called “trade din”, which was cheap alcohol made from potatoes by Dutch people and exported to West Africa for local consumption. The British forbade the export of this to Northern Nigeria because of their respect for Islamic feelings. Secondly revenue also accrued to the Southern protectorate from export of palm oil and palm kernels as well as hard wood timber, whereas in the North revenue was only derived from export of tin and columbite, as well as hides and skins. The days of the groundnut pyramid in Kano were still in the distant future. In order to save the British exchequer of money being sent to the Northern protectorate as subvention, amalgamating the two protectorates became a reasonable way out. British political tradition overseas supported amalgamation. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, separate colonies were usually pressured and encouraged, for the purpose of protection to merge into larger units. When there was considerable distance among them the merger always took the form of federations. Hence Sir Lugard was following the British tradition when he brought the two protectorates together in 1914. He had no illusion about what he was doing. He did not set out to unite the newly created Nigeria neither did he set out to merge the Civil Service of the two protectorates. What he did was to leave the Northern administration as it was while trying to bring the Northern system of indirect rule into the Southern protectorate. The British officials in the South were of course not happy with the Lugardian system to the extent that a cynic said “if it were possible for the native Nigerians to withdraw from Nigeria, civil war would have broken out between British officials in the South and North”. Southerners who ventured to go to the North were made to live outside the Birane in what was called Sabo gari or new towns outside the native cities. Northerners who also came to the South were subjected to the same social isolation from their compatriots in the South. This of course was deliberate because Lugard did not want Southerners to infect their Northern counterparts with what he called seditious and radical ideas. The Governor-General’s younger brother Major Edward Lugard whom he appointed his political secretary dismissed the educated Southerners as “trouserd niggers dressed in Bond street attires” and “who send their laundry to London every forth night for dry cleaning. This social division of northerners and southerners was to determine the future political and economic development of the country. The question now is should we celebrate the centenary of the amalgamation? There is no agreement on this. Some feel there is nothing to celebrate; others feel since the experiment has lasted a hundred years there is something to celebrate. The country that we have may not be a country of our dream but it is worth noting that if we leverage the size of our population both locally and internationally, there would be more dividends that will be accrue to Nigeria. What is wrong with Nigeria today is that it is not well configured and there is too much power centralised in the centre. We have had 53 years to change this imperfect edifice but we have not been able to do so because there is vested interest in the status quo. It is not Nigeria that something is wrong with, it is the people of Nigeria. Some have argued that Nigerian peoples are strangers to themselves. This is not outrightly true. Before the advent of the British, there were economic and cultural contacts between the Yoruba and the Nupe and among the Yoruba, Kanuri and Hausa. The artistic tradition of the Yoruba, Nupe, Igala and the Igbos of Igbo-Ukwu is the same. The Igbo for example and the Igala were in political contacts before the coming of the British and the dynasties in Benin and Yoruba land originated from the same source. The Jukun of the middle Benue valley had cultural and political influences in wide areas of Northern Nigeria as well as in the Cross River Valley. The point I am making is that if the British had not come to Nigeria, the people of Nigeria may have evolved into some kind of polity built on the then existing cultural and economic ties.

    I am using the title The Amalgamation and its Enemies from a book edited by Professor Richard A. Olaniyan, retired Professor of History from the renowned Obafemi Awolowo University. Professor Olaniyan has put together in this book under reference 11 chapters dealing with all the issues on the amalgamation and how the project has been seriously subverted by socio-political, economic and ethno-religious contradiction and this subversion has made the search for an enduring national cohesion at best a tantalising possibility. The contributors to this book under reference include Professors Dauda Abubakar, Adewale Adebamiwi, Adigun Agbaje, Akin Alao, W. Alade Fawole, Ehimika A. Ifidon, Leo E. Otoide, Rufus T. Akinyele and Richard A. Olaniyan himself as well as the late Professor Adiele E. Afigbo and with a forward by the distinguished Professor Tekena Tamuno. Coming from different parts of Nigeria, and straddling history and political science gives the book under reference its great value and I advice all those who want to make contributions to the discussion of the amalgamation to purchase a copy of this book and read it.

    Our peoples’ frustration with the politics and economy of this federation is unfortunately undermining the development of nationalistic fervour which swept off the British from Nigeria in 1960. Since independence and the removal of a foreign target or political enemy, Nigerians have not had the fortune of the right kind of political leadership that could galvanise the country into greatness and leadership position on the continent. The result of this is the dissatisfaction of most Nigerians with the political monster of a country that cannot guarantee development and security for its people. After all the reason for the existence of any polity must be for the happiness of the people. No one can seriously tell fellow Nigerians that all is well when the cancerous sickness of corruption, inequity, insecurity and underdevelopment is apparent for all to see. This is why there are many enemies of the “mistake of 1914” as arrogantly stated by the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sarduna of Sokoto and his counterpart, Obafemi Awolowo who dismissed in 1947 Nigeria as a “mere geographical expression”. The challenge before all of us is to prove these two political titans wrong.

  • Parable of the President who couldn’t be a lion (3)

    This year as all others, will our hopes die with fantasy-fitted fears? Shall we dream our way to the future like the drunk’s feeble strut towards the closed liquor store? The future we dream smell of unheralded bliss and surreal life forms but the paths we chart reek of human entrails and cadavers of dreams that died young. This freedom we flaunt is useless to us; if you examine it closely, you will see it manifests as free doom. When you taste it, it stings like badly brewed beer; having drunk too much of it for too long, we go through each day in a perpetual hang over.

    After 54 years, there should be nothing left. But we stand somnolent in a persistent hang over; dreaming of a better Nigeria and a better future even as we entrust our heartfelt dreams to familiar undertakers. But that is simply one way to look at us. We are the nation of excellent technocrats and desirable intellectuals who entrusted our destinies to President Goodluck Jonathan and company.

    Guess it will simply not do to deny the promise and intimidating potentials of President Goodluck Jonathan anymore. Who knows, President Jonathan may unexpectedly become that proverbial revolutionary that Nigeria so badly needs. Perhaps it is certainly not fair to crucify President Jonathan for damages wrought over preceding years of bad leadership.

    He is not a magician, is he? Neither is he a “lion,” a thug, “Pharaoh,” or autocratic army general. But he is, despite everything, Executive President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria. By virtue of his office and the expanse of his territory, President Goodluck Jonathan is to the African continent what American President Barack Obama, believes he is to the world. But he does not seem to know that yet. That is why he may never chart that remarkable roadmap that would see us evolve from the sleeping giant of Africa to an intercontinental super power.

    It’s amazing what colourful definitions we ascribe to Mr. President. Agreed, it is hardly a good time to be President but is there ever a good time to be Mr. President? Goodluck Jonathan could never have it as easy as he would like it to be. Governance is never so easy; not in any part of the world. It takes a real man to rise to the demands of leadership particularly within the worst of abnormal climes and political culture. Is Goodluck Jonathan such a man?

    He is the President Nigeria currently deserves, no doubt about that – but the most conscientious jury will certainly falter on the necessity of a President Goodluck Jonathan as the C-in-C of the Federal Republic of Nigeria beyond this moment in history.

    Can President Goodluck Jonathan tame tragedy and rewrite it into bliss if by a horrendous twist of fate, he is re-elected or rigged back into power come 2015 general elections? Can he cultivate history and command it? Can he become the solution to Nigeria’s most pressing problems? How?

    In his independence anniversary speeches; in that familiar bland, platitudinous style characteristic of Nigeria’s ruling class, he waxes lyrical, sentimental and tough. In one of such speeches, he said: “I value all Nigerians. I see our youth who are looking for jobs and yet remain hopeful. I see the farmer, and fisherman, toiling everyday to earn a living. I see the teacher, working hard, to train our future generations, with much sacrifice. I see the market women whose entrepreneurial spirit helps to generate income for their children and families… I see every single profession and vocation, making positive contributions to national progress. I value you all!”

    In his recent New Year message, he claims, “Our national budget for 2014 which is now before the National Assembly is specifically targeted at job creation and inclusive growth. We are keenly aware that in spite of the estimated 1.6 million new jobs created across the country in the past 12 months as a result of our actions and policies, more jobs are still needed to support our growing population. Our economic priorities will be stability and equitable growth, building on the diverse sectors of our economy.”

    President Jonathan’s utterances are at once a contradiction and barely disguised attempt to poke fun at over 150 million Nigerians. And that is merely a way to consider it. President Jonathan would do better if changes and progress he excitedly recounts and promises are in any way felt and discernible to the unemployed youth, farmer, fisherman and market woman whose plights he claims to be concerned with.

    There is hardly anything worth the excitement and hope of the purported recipients of his message. This is because Mr. President’s economics complicates the ease in easy. Even as Economics is erroneously adjudged one of the soft sciences, it is indeed one of the “soft” sciences without easy answers.

    Yet President Jonathan will have us believe that “We are witnessing a revolution in the agricultural sector and the results are evident” and that his 7.8 per cent growth rate is the best thing that would ever happen to the unemployed youth, farmer, fisherman and market woman.

    How? At what cost and to whose disadvantage? In economics, the only rationally accessible truths manifest at the individual or organizational – that is, the microeconomic level. For instance, it is clearly the case for the individual that more will be demanded, subject to the law of diminishing returns, if the real economic costs (prices) are less, all other things being equal. Only at the individual or organizational level can all other things (ceteris paribus), be held equal.

    At the macroeconomic level however, nothing can be held equal, so no real truths can emerge. It is at this point that facts become sacred and yet ultimately violable, and history becomes malleable. We know that there are great efficiencies to be gained by an improvement in the growth rate of a country’s GDP.

    But we also know that the micro and macro-economics of such growth process, particularly in Nigeria, translates as balderdash to its common recipients even as it fosters the incongruities that makes such advancements persistently indulgent and accommodating to the greed and several excesses of the Nigerian ruling class.

    It’s a harsh life for the unemployed youth, farmer, fisherman and market woman of the sidewalk among so many others. Let President Jonathan desist from his obscenely casual and expedient lip-service to their plight. No matter how well-meaning he is, he will be judged by how humanely his government improved the quality of lives.

    Bet this is where his unrepentant loyalists will argue that it is not the duty of government to put food on every Nigerian’s table. True. In fact, the virtue of statesmanship and industry demands that every man pursues honest livelihood within legitimate and sustainable means, to his benefit and that of the society.

    Today, President Goodluck Jonathan is seen in a new light; as a facilitator or violator of that inalienable right. He is a Messiah to his kinsmen and party loyalists and a team player to his ruling class. But to the poor, ordinary middle class and breadlines, who is Jonathan?

    •To be continued…

  • A preview of 2014

    A preview of 2014

    Most Nigerians are happy to see the end of 2013 and will receive 2014, a new year, with some positive expectations, even though most of these will, as usual, not be met. 2013 was a year of ups and downs, more downs than ups, a mixed grill of more personal pains, more tragedies, than happiness. For many it is good riddance. All the old national problems, the Boko Haram security menace, to which Pope Francis referred in his Christmas Day speech, political assassinations, kidnappings, massive public corruption, mass unemployment, the poor social and economic infrastructure persisted, making daily life more difficult, particularly for the poor. As former President Obasanjo stated it in his 18-page letter of December 5, to President Jonathan, the ‘nation is bleeding’ from his inaction and incompetence.

    Foreign and local analyses indicate that the domestic economy achieved a growth rate of 6.8 per cent in 2013, slightly lower than the forecast of over 7 per cent. Nigeria’s economic fundamentals remain quite strong. There is greater stability in the foreign exchange market and inflation is under control. But this impressive growth rate has not translated to more jobs or a better life for the poor. The rich have continued to get richer, while the poor are getting poorer. More and more personal sacrifices are demanded of the poor, while the economic and financial rewards continue to go to the rich. This trend has increased social tensions and crimes in the country, as the poor, in desperation, take the law into their hands. It is a classic prescription for social conflict in the country.

    The impressive growth rate, one of the fastest in Africa, had been achieved and maintained over the last three years. The average for the rest of Africa in 2013 was about 5 per cent. The high growth rate was the reward for the tough economic adjustment measures introduced some thirty years ago, which aimed at restructuring the entire economy through its diversification and the allocation of a bigger role for the private sector in the domestic economy. But the high growth rate, particularly in communications (8%) and construction (2 %), was still far less than the target of 10 per cent envisioned for the economy to make Nigeria a truly emerging economy by the year 2020. It was fuelled largely by erstwhile and favourable trends in the oil sector and higher levels of foreign direct investment (FDI).

    But by the second half of the year, Nigeria was beginning to lose 25 per cent of its oil production to oil theft. In fact, the growth rate would have been higher but for this vast oil theft and customs waivers which had a negative effect on national revenues. By the third quarter of the year, there were fears that Nigeria was going broke. Revenue allocation to the states fell sharply. The Federal Government could not meet some of its statutory financial obligations. The minister of finance denied this, but the evidence is overwhelming that the federal and states governments are all facing a cash crunch. Many public sector projects had to be abandoned due to lack of funds. The trains are now partially rehabilitated and offering limited services. But the Nigerian Railways needs additional funds to make it more functional. The narrow gauge has to be changed to the standard gauge to improve its overall services. Kenya has just announced that it is embarking on the building of a new standard gauge for its train services. It is the kind of investment that Nigeria needs very badly if it is to modernise its public transportation, still in a deplorable state. If the East-West road is completed, it will cut travelling time to the East by half.

    What are the prognoses for 2014? Things will certainly be tougher for the country than last year. With dwindling oil revenues, and the massive corruption in the oil sector, where some $10 billion in revenue is reported missing, it is unlikely that the economy can sustain its current growth rate of over 6 per cent in 2014. Some indication of this can be seen in the 2014 federal deficit budget that is almost a trillion naira lower than the budget for 2013. As usual, capital expenditure was barely a third of recurrent expenditure, an indication that efforts to reduce the cost of governance in Nigeria have failed. The federal bureaucracy has continued to grow in size and incompetence. This means that many of the public sector projects envisaged in 2014 will either not be completed, or will be abandoned totally. There will be less job creation and increasing pressure on social services. The power sector is unlikely to witness any significant improvement, as the investments needed in the sector cannot be made due to rising financial constraints. If Nigeria achieves greater stability in its power supply, its economy can grow by 10 per cent. Led by recovery in the US economy, the global economic recession is weakening and Nigeria should benefit from this favourable trend. But there will be reduced demand for its oil, due to emerging alternative sources of oil, particularly shale oil. China still has a deficit of oil supplies, but it is now relying more on Angola for its oil supplies than Nigeria. With all these negative economic trends, economic growth in 2014 will be much slower and lower, in the region of 5 per cent.

    At the political level, 2014 promises to be an exciting, if not violent year. It is the year before the presidential elections in 2015. Already, the political landscape is changing with the emergence of a new united opposition party, the All Progressives’ Congress (APC), an amalgam of nearly all opposition parties in the country. President Jonathan is facing critical challenges to his political future, including his ambition to seek a second term in office. His ruling party, the PDP, is in disarray, with many of its governors and members of the National Assembly defecting to the opposition. This development represents a serious challenge to his hold on power, already slipping. Instead of being considered a national leader, he is beginning to look increasingly as the leader of an ethnic group, to which he is now forced to withdraw. The open and savage attack on Jonathan in Obasanjo’s open letter to him, (a case of the kettle calling the pot black) has now forced into the open the internal divisions in the PDP. President Jonathan is fast losing political support in the country, and will have considerable difficulty in getting the PDP presidential nomination for the 2015 elections.

    Former President Obasanjo has made it clear that he is not leaving the PDP. His strategy is to make it impossible for President Jonathan to win the PDP nomination for 2015. With the massive withdrawal of support for Jonathan in the North, Obasanjo’s strategy may work, particularly if a Northern candidate is chosen, instead of Jonathan, as the PDP presidential candidate. There is speculation that Obasanjo has Sule Lamido, the PDP Governor of Jigawa, in mind as the PDP presidential candidate. This explains why Lamido has not joined his colleagues in defecting to the APC. He is playing the waiting game.

    Now, if he gets the PDP presidential nomination, there will almost certainly be fresh political re-alignments, with the PDP members, who have recently defected to the APC, returning to their old Party, the PDP. They defected from the PDP simply because they want power to return to the North, an ambition supported by the APC. Obasanjo will not work for the APC to replace his party, the PDP, as the ruling Party in Nigeria. He cannot be accused this time of duplicity as he was rightly accused in the 2003 presidential elections when he outfoxed the AD. He has all but made it very clear that he will remain with the PDP. Now, if there is reversed defection from the APC to the PDP, this will place the APC on the horns of a dilemma. The political alliance may break up, as the sole objective of the alliance is to gain control of the federal government.

    Altogether, it will be for both the PDP and the APC a ‘do or die’ election. We may expect a lot of blood letting over this in the run up to 2015. Obasanjo has already claimed that Jonathan is training some snipers for the election, and that he has some 1000 people on his watch list, with some of them marked for possible elimination. Jonathan has referred the claim to the security agencies for investigation. But it is a claim that cannot be proven, and the security agencies will report that there is no basis for the claim. Whether it is true or not, the allegation has increased political tension in the country, a disincentive to foreign investment this year, as potential investors will place their plans on hold until after the 2015 elections. This is the centenary anniversary of Nigeria’s amalgamation as a country. But we will have to hold our breath as the politicians determine Nigeria’s political future in 2014 and after.

    May I avail myself of this medium to wish all readers of this column a happy and prosperous New Year.

  • Nigeria in 2014

    It is that time of the year again when we do stock taking. We take a retrospective look at what happened in the past and then project into the future. We do this as individuals, corporate bodies and nations. We use the past to assess the present and define the future. I don’t know if this is still in fashion; it also used to be a time for resolutions. I remember those days when an old year is about winding down, we start making resolutions of our do’s and don’ts for the coming year.

    It is funny recalling these things now. What were our resolutions, if you may ask? They ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Someone will shout on top of his voice from one corner of our room then in the hostel : ”I will stop smoking next year”. Another person will take it up from there : ”I will stop chasing girls next year”. It will go on and on like that, as if these were the issues most important on earth. But for us as little as we were then, they were because they were issues which defined our very existence.

    Now we are men and no longer boys. Things have changed and we too have changed. Those things that define our existence now are quiet different from what they were those days. We no longer think in terms of our individual selves but now do so as people charged with the responsibilities of managing others. We now think big, so to say, and no longer small. We worry more about our country and how we can contribute towards its betterment.

    In 2013, which has about six hours left to go into oblivion as I write this, Nigeria, like other nations, went through its ups and downs. Will 2014 be better? This is the question many are pondering as the year rolls into its second day today. What will Nigeria look like in 2014? I will surmise a guess here using data available from 2013. I am not clairvoyant but I will try and gaze into the crystal ball and see what 2014 has for Nigeria. We get to a certain stage in life where we try to see the fiture if not through our powers but through the aid of those gifted to do so.

    Banquo, the Scottish warrior, found himself in that situation on returning from battle with Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play titled Macbeth. After the three witches made some predictions concerning Macbeth, Banquo was constrained to ask them : ”If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate”. Can this reporter, though not a wizard, now look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not in Nigeria in 2014.

    Of course in 2014, the national conference will hold as planned by the Jonathan administration, but it will lead to no where. My fear is that the planned talk may be aborted, even before it starts. Between now and February when it is expected to start, we don’t have much time left. The government is planning for a conference of over 500 delegates and for now it has not told us the modality for picking these delegates. Will they be handpicked? Will they be elected? Election is out of the matter because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has its hands full with the coming general elections in 2015. Don’t be shocked if the planned conference is shifted till 2015, that is if President Goodluck Jonathan wins a second term.

    At last, in 2014, the day we have been waiting for will come when the president tells the nation about his political future. Will Jonathan run in 2015? I make bold to say here without any fear of contradiction that the answer is yes and by June or July we will know where the driver is taking us as it concerns this matter. So far, the president has resisted all moves to get him to declare his stand on the matter. To do so now, he said, might lead to overheating the polity. But his body language (ah! that again) shows that he is more than interested in a second term.

    Unknown to the president, he played his hand when he deposed to an affidavit in a suit challenging his right to seek re-election in 2015. In that affidavit, he swore that he has the right to seek a second term if he so wishes after his current tenure. I quite agree with Mr President that we cannot deny him his right on the basis of the so – called gentleman’s agreement he reportedly had with his party’s governor’s in 2011. What has agreement got to do with it when the issue at stake is ambition; vaulting ambition at that? It goes without saying that Jonathan will run in 2015.

    To justify his decision, he will tell us that he cannot sacrifice the right, which the Constitution grants him to seek a second term in order to satisfy the North, which is leading the campaign against his return to power in 2015. There will be more trouble for the president in 2014 from within his party. He will part ways with the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, in order to bring those against the shipping magnate to his own side, but it will be too little, too late. Whether or not he dumps Tukur, Jonathan is walking on thin ice.

    PDP will continue to be depleted in 2014. Its five governors, who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) are gone for good. The party is not likely to win the case it instituted against them in court, going by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Atiku case against former President Olusegun Obasanjo and PDP. Still talking politics, Governors Kayode Fayemi and Rauf Aregbesola of Ekiti and Osun states may be re-elected into office based on their first term achievements. The opposition will put up a stiff challenge, but the governors are, as book makers will say, good to go for a second term.

    The economy is it, any day, any time. The Federal and state governments will continue to bandy words about the management of the economy, especially the handling of the Excess Crude Account (ECA), which holds a lot of our money once there is a rise in oil price in the international market. The central government is somehow cagey about throwing the book open for the governors to see because it knows the danger in doing that. With an election year in clear sight, the government knows what it is doing by keeping the ECA under wraps.

    For sometime now, the monthly allocations have not been shared among the three tiers of government because there seems to be nothing to share. This has put many states under serious strain, with some not paying salary regularly and others owing workers. Unless the government opens up on the true position of things, the matter may remain unresolved in 2014. By now, Jonathan may have made up his mind on who to appoint as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor after Mallam Lamido Sanusi leaves office in June. Who gets the job? Aigboje Aig – Imoukhuede? Tunde Lemo? Kingsley Muoghalu? I bet you, whoever gets it, will the the president’s man and not another Sanusi, who will be writing letters, on some supposed missing oil money.

    2014 is another World Cup year. We are drawn in our group with Iran , Bosnia and Argentina. From the draw, one may be tempted to say it is an easy group. But the experts here say that is not so. Going by FIFA ranking, we are the least rated in our group. Despite that, as I told Ade Ojeikere, the Editor of SPORTING LIFE, our sister paper, I am sticking out my neck for Nigeria to qualify for the round of 16 from that group and go ahead to win the prized trophy. Patriotism, uh! Happy New Year.

  • Jonathan and the letter to Obasanjo

    If the president’s uninspiring response to the weighty issues his godfather had raised in his December 2, 18-page letter about the shortcomings of his administration was all the committee he appointed to draft a reply came up with, the president should consider that as a betrayal. They have done great injustice to the president as a statesman either due to incompetence or because they are self-serving sycophants that have succeeded in capturing the president as alleged by Obasanjo.

    In any case, if moaning, name-calling and bellyaching were the answers to the issues ex-President Obasanjo had identified, what many of us have said of Obasanjo and his brand of politics would have been sufficient. In this regard, help for the presidency even came from an unlikely quarters, Iyabo Obasanjo, the ex-president beloved daughter. Her alleged letter to his father which our peerless columnist Olatunji Dare says “is perfuse with contempt, ridicule, scorn, and loathing abhorrence of the most visceral kind”, inflicted more damage to her father’s reputation than Jonathan’s abuses could have ever achieved.

    Just as we have said of Obasanjo who calls himself ‘Mr. Nigeria’, who Jonathan, his godson has since reminded us does not own Nigeria, of trying to define his baleful legacies including imposition of Jonathan on Nigeria, it is also obvious Jonathan was motivated only by concern for survival and his legacies and not about Nigerians. This came out clearly from the tenth reason he advanced for responding to his godfather’s letter. “The tenth and final reason why my reply is inevitable”, he says, “is that you have written similar letters and made public comments in reference to all former Presidents and Heads of Government starting from Alhaji Shehu Shagari and these have instigated different actions and reactions. The purpose and direction of your letter is distinctly ominous…” Consequently, nearly everything the president says in his letter is about his own survival and legacies which he like his godfather erroneously thinks he can define.

    Thus, on Obasanjo’s appeal that the president as the leader of PDP takes some measures to prevent the imminent collapse of the party, Jonathan says he is a better PDP leader than Obasanjo backing his position with a long list of PDP founding fathers he rightly claimed Obasanjo frustrated out of PDP.

    On corruption that has become a source of embarrassment to even friends of Nigeria including the late revered Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and Britain’s Cameron, he says to Obasanjo,: ‘You will recall that your kinsman, the renowned afro-beat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti famously sang about it during your first stint as Head of State. Even in this Fourth Republic, the Siemens and Halliburton scandals are well known. And for a good effect, he added ‘sons of some of our party leaders are currently facing trial for their involvement in the celebrated subsidy scam affair. I can hardly be blamed if the wheels of justice still grind very slowly in our country’.

    On kidnapping and armed robbery, President Jonathan shot back “it is just as well to remind you that the first major case of kidnapping for ransom took place around 2006. And the Boko Haram crisis dates back to 2002. Goodluck Jonathan was not the President of the country then. Also, armed robbery started in this country immediately after the civil war and since then, it has been’.

    In response to what he described as the most ‘invidious allegation of training snipers to assassinate political opponents’, he said: ‘I have never been associated with any form of political violence. There have certainly been cases of political assassination since the advent of our Fourth Republic, but as you well know, none of them occurred under my leadership.’

    On the president’s alleged undertaking to serve for six years; he turned the heat on his godfather accusing him of a resolve to ‘embark on a virulent campaign to harass (him) out of an undeclared candidature for the 2015 presidential elections so as to pave the way for a successor anointed by Obasanjo.’

    The first nine other reasons the president gave as justification for responding to Obasanjo were equally all about Jonathan: three un investigated assassination attempts on his life in 2007, his administration better score card in foreign relations compared to Obasanjo’s; his administration’s attraction of $25.7 billion FDI in just three years compared to Obasanjo’s $24.9 billion in seven years, and his creation of level playing ground for Labour in Ondo and APGA in Anambra governorship elections unlike Obasanjo who favoured some PDP candidates (short of admitting Obasanjo had rigged for PDP candidates in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun).

    Many Nigerians must have felt diminished by President Jonathan’s letter. Jonathan was already our vice president when Obama became American President. Obama inherited a deeply divided and disillusioned American society facing two wars and saddled with $16 trillion foreign debt. When his aides started moaning and bellyaching about the legacies of Republicans and their half-educated President George Bush jnr., Obama coolly admonished them insisting American voters elected him to solve those problems. In other words he wouldn’t have been elected president if those challenges were not there.

    But let us for a moment even concede it to the president that he is overwhelmed by challenges of his office, a domestic insurrection by Boko Haram, punctured and leaking PDP family umbrella that once provided sanctuary for all manners of characters from which some elected PDP governors and legislators have since escaped seeking refuge under APC, crisis in his home Bayelsa and Rivers fuelled by Nyesom Wike, supervising minister of education who swears by the name of the president’s wife, kleptomaniac ministers, etc, but what can we say of belligerent and combative advisers, paid through the public purse to protect the president but chose moaning and name-calling as answers to daunting issues merely echoed by Obasanjo?

    Nigerians are not amused that the president chose to agonise over the un-investigated assassinations attempts on his life back in 2007 when he was a governor and vice presidential candidate. What Nigerian expected of the president who has been in power for close to five years was to have revisited not only the attempt on his life but other high profile assassination of his PDP family members like Marshall Harry, Aminasoari Dikibo, Funsho Williams, and others like Chief Alfred Rewane, and Bola Ige, an attorney general killed in his house under the nose of those detailed to protect him. Does a crime cease being a crime because there is a change of guard at the presidency? Once again, Nigerians are not asking the president and his advisers to invent the wheel. They can take a cue from Barack Obama’s five year crusade against American Congress over the battle to allow the 558 detainees in Guantanamo Bay detention Camp in Cuba face criminal charges in American courts or repatriated back to their respective countries.

    Nigerians feel insulted by President Jonathan’s advisers’ trivialization of problem of corruption by making reference to Obasanjo’s kinsman singing about corruption during Obasanjo’s first coming as Head of State. Instead of addressing the serious issues of corruption, it amounts to bringing governance to kindergarten level as alleged by Chief Bisi Akande, the APC interim chairman. The president must not be deceived by his self-serving advisers. Nigerians are angry about Jonathan’s lack of political will to fight corruption as alleged by the speaker of the lower house. Nigerians are angry he has laid a bad precedent by pardoning convicted Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who is also wanted for money laundering in Britain. Nigerians feel insulted and taken for granted by Jonathan’s silence on ‘Oduahgate’ after a House Committee’s indictment.

    Nigerians want their God-fearing president who was given a landslide victory in 2011 because they trusted him, to revisit the KPMG report on NNPC, the Ribadu report on fuel subsidy theft and the House Committee Report on fuel subsidy scandal. Our jobless youths whose future is being mortgaged want the president who was once a ‘shoeless’ youth, to revisit the House Committee Report on Privatization that recommended some of the companies given away to cronies at next to nothing, be taken back by the state so as to create job opportunities for some of our army of unemployed.

  • Rambling thoughts – 2

    On our part in Africa, especially in Nigeria, we are not able to run our country well and we are still busy tinkering with our constitution and bothering about taking census that would gobble up half of our national budget. Our educational sector is lying prostrate as universities were closed for almost five months. There are no roads, railways, inland waterways, safe and regular aviation services, and our communication infrastructure begs for improvement and our electric power generation is still less than what an average north American city would have. These are serious challenges that we would need to face. It is probably too late for my generation. But shouldn’t the next generation, the young people and those yet unborn have a better shake in life? There is no point in our complaining that we are looked down upon wherever we go. We probably deserve it. If we had a thriving economy, a decent and secure society at home, and a generally satisfied nation, we and our children would not need to go anywhere. God has been very kind to us Africans. We have the best climate in the world, hardly any hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and landslides. There is nothing wrong in our stars; it is us that something is wrong with. I pray that in my lifetime, Nigeria would put itself on the trajectory of civilised life, so that our young people can have visions while we old people dream dreams.

    It is very difficult to know where to begin the task of reformation and salvation for our land and our peoples. It doesn’t seem that the crop of political leaders we have would provide this. Since 1999, we’ve had another chance at civilian politics after years of military domination. I am not one of those who would belly-ache about the era of our military rulers. All I would have wanted is for them to be like those military leaders who transformed South Korea into a successful industrial economy or the communist dictators of China who have succeeded in building up China into the industrial work house of the world and the second largest global economy. But unfortunately in our own case, we suffered from the double jeopardy of military dictatorship and underdevelopment. Unfortunately when we transited into a so called civilian democracy in 1999, the elected president foisted on us was an unreformed military dictator. Since 1999, we have been stumbling from one crisis to another.

    In fact our situation has deteriorated to the point that everything now is seen from an ethnic prism. Those who felt if none of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria provided the president, that things would be better and that ethnic loyalties and preferment would not be as strong as before, have been completely proved wrong. It now seems that if the minor of the minorities by luck throws up the president of the country, we would be faced with the same problem of his giving preference to his ethnic cohorts in appointments into key positions. I was happy to read what Adams Oshiomhole, the Governor of Edo State said about performance as the antidote to ethnic problems in Nigeria, and that no matter from what ethnic group one comes from, if he or she works for the betterment of the society, everybody irrespective of their ethnic group would recognise it. But in a situation of blindly following an ethnic cohort who is not performing, lies the danger for our country.

    One is almost tempted to give up on Nigeria and to mind his or her own business. But we can’t because this is the only country that we have. “We must stay here and salvage it together”. This is where our ancestors lived and were buried. This is the place where our umbilical cords were buried. I always told my children that no matter their achievements in a foreign land, it cannot be the same as if they were in Nigeria. When I go home to Okemesi, as soon as I am seen by traditional ‘dundun’ drummers, they know what cognomen to call me to make me empty my pockets into their hands. There are people in my hometown who when they see me, can go on for one hour reciting my family’s praise names. These are the things that make life worth living and not the money or titles that modernity has brought to us in Nigeria. Our situation is desperate and I am going to suggest an unorthodox way out.

    Before I go into this, let me say that structurally, Nigeria has to change. The best way to go is to have six federating zones of the country rather than the present unwieldy 36 state structure plus Abuja. Secondly, we do not need a bi-cameral legislature at the centre. What we need is a unicameral legislature like what Canadians are now trying to do in their country by abolishing the Upper house which is a waste of resources anywhere. We are not America, and we should never compare ourselves with America. We should also go back to the parliamentary system of government so that the leader of our government is right there in parliament defending his policies and answering questions. This is what our sister state in South Africa practices and this nonsense of the centre creating local government should stop. We do not need 774 local governments and whatever local governments we need would be created by the zonal governments.

    Having said this, at the inauguration of elected leaders, they must be made to swear by the Bible or the Quran and whatever traditional beliefs that are prevalent in their areas in addition. So that whoever betrays his people, if he is not killed by the long suffering Gods of the Bible and Quran may be killed by the local Amadioha or Sango or any such local gods that our people fear. Who knows, this unorthodox thing may work and we should not be shy to discuss this line of action because unusual time demands unusual actions. We should also bring the death penalty as a punishment for corruption, embezzlement just like we have it for murder. A man or woman who runs away with huge amount of state funds is no less a murderer than the armed robber that waylays people on the highway, because if the money stolen were available for development, the highway gangster may have been profitably and gainfully employed.

    I also believe that there are some genuine men of God of the two monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity in Nigeria who command respect among their followers. These men of God as part of their pastoral duties and as tribunes of the people, should speak out and condemn erring leaders with all the emphasis at their command. After all, this was what the Prophets of old used to do. And if we really have genuine men of God, they should follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and condemn whatever is unjust, evil, inequitable, unfair and ungodly in our land. The days of separating Caesar and God are over in Nigeria and our men of God should not be contended with saving our souls only, they must ensure we have a good life while we are here on the earthly side of the heavenly divide.

  • Yoruba nation: Time to stand strong

    A couple of days ago, I took part in what amounted to a technological miracle. It was a conference by telephone by Yoruba intellectuals from virtually all countries of the world. We were meeting under the auspices of a Yoruba think-tank organization with members all over the globe. Participants in this meeting were located in the deepest south of the world (in Australia and New Zealand), in countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, all the way as far north as Canada in North America and Norway and Russia in northern Europe. And we were meeting to discuss the all-important subject of the well-being and future of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. Believe me, it was awesome hearing speaker after speaker, each an eminent scholar or professional, separated by tens of thousands of miles across the face of the earth.

    In a way that is impossible for most Yoruba people at home, and for most Nigerians, to imagine, the Yoruba nation, by investing heavily in education for many decades, has transformed itself into a formidable global force. About a year ago, I stumbled upon a website of one of America’s ivy-league universities where it is written in bold type: “The Yoruba of West Africa are one of the most travelled peoples on earth. Their language and blood-type show up almost everywhere on the globe”. There must be very few countries in the wider world in which highly educated Yoruba men or women do not occupy important positions in academia, government service, or the professions. Increasingly in due course, all this global influence is sure to impact the fortunes of the Yoruba nation and the affairs of Nigeria in mighty ways.

    The global tele-conference went on for hours and explored many subjects at very profound levels. I am not authorized to make such things public. I cannot even possibly do it in any article of any length. But there are some things that I can skim from the surface – and those I will touch now, to satisfy my irrepressible urge to communicate with my people.

    First, it was emphasized that it is crucial that we Yoruba people must hold dear the shining treasures of our political culture, even in the jungle and wild storm that Nigeria has become. The temptation is strong for our leading public figures to go chasing and catching the trash and scum from the confused debris, but they must resist the temptation – if the Yoruba nation is to fulfill its destiny in the world. For instance, all strata of the Yoruba nation must make very clear our unyielding attachment to government based on the power and consent of the people, government that decently respects the will of the people – because this is a strong pillar of our political culture, and was so for over a thousand years before we became part of Nigeria. That means that there are many things that are strong features of the Nigerian political jungle, but that we Yoruba must denounce and reject in very clear terms.

    One example is that we must make it clear that we do not endorse military coups as a means of addressing the failings of a democratically elected government, and that we will never again accept to live under any military regime in Nigeria. Faint indications in Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent letter to President Jonathan that a military intervention against President Jonathan might be under consideration in some quarters are against the collective will and interest of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. We are conversant with the weaknesses of President Jonathan’s government; we also know that he has some distaste for us Yoruba people – apparently, partly because of some inexplicable ethnic animosity, and partly because we have been too freedom-loving to succumb to, and let our state governments be controlled by, his monstrous party, the PDP. In spite of all these, we must be strong and steadfast in rejecting any attempt by any group to terminate his presidency, or any future government of Nigeria, by a coup or any kind of violent force. Some of our leading politicians are part of a movement working now to create a new political party that aims to push the PDP out of power. Others among our politicians are working against this emerging political party. Those kinds of open democratic processes are harmonious with our political tradition; hideous plotting in the dark to change government by force is, on the basis of our political culture, an outrage and a very serious crime – and we must make that absolutely clear to the rest of Nigeria.

    We must also make it clear to Nigeria that we are now much more determined to uphold and show our rejection of electoral fraud – the heinous disease that has been periodically bringing disaster upon Nigeria since the 1964 federal elections. The source of this Nigerian disease is that the people who control the powers of the federal government have since independence assumed that it is their prerogative to dictate, by fraudulent means if necessary, the outcomes of elections to the federal government, as well as elections to state and local governments, in all parts of Nigeria. In the context of that disruptive assumption, federal agencies connected with elections – the electoral commission, the electoral appeal courts, and the Nigeria Police – have usually operated like invading armies in those parts of Nigeria where the people show some determination to elect their governors and representatives freely. The Yoruba states of Nigeria have always been the foremost of the areas so invaded by federal agencies at elections. And young people of the Yoruba nation have again and again stood up stoutly against the invasion, and since independence, countless thousands of these youths have given their lives in the fight. From October 1965 to January 1966, hundreds of these youths were killed by Nigerian law-enforcement agencies in all parts of the Western Region. In 1983, when falsified results were announced by the federal electoral authorities for the gubernatorial election in Ondo State and Ondo State youths arose to resist the fraud, tens of them were killed by police bullets in the streets. After the gubernatorial election in Osun State in 2007, the morgue in one large hospital in the state was reported to be holding tens of unidentified corpses – all of young men who had stood up against the electoral fraud and had been killed in the process. Very stubborn litigation fights in the courts followed the 2003 and 2007 elections in the Yoruba states, resulting in most cases in the throwing out of the official election results.

    In short, we Yoruba, being for about one-thousand years accustomed to selecting our rulers, are too culturally attached to free and fair elections to tolerate electoral frauds. At the forthcoming national conference, the Nigerian federation must be so restructured that Nigerians in various states of Nigeria will be able to elect their governments freely without having to wrestle with any invading federal agencies. This is part of the reasons why we Yoruba people strongly support the calling of a national conference. But we will also look out sharp, and powerfully defend our electoral freedom, in the state elections that are due to come in 2014, before the national conference completes business.

    We Yoruba nation have a lot to contribute to saving Nigeria from the collapse that now threatens Nigeria. And we fully accept the duty of cooperating with the other nationalities of Nigeria to save and build Nigeria into a stable, peaceful, progressive and prosperous country. But to be able to put forth our best contribution, we must hold loyally and uncompromisingly to the best and most constructive attributes of our own political culture. For our wobbly and stumbling Nigeria to stabilize and survive, all Nigerian peoples who have constructive cultural assets to give must stand strong and give.We must stand firm on our good principles; surrendering to those who desire to preserve the corrupt tendencies and practices that have been destroying Nigeria is not service but betrayal.

  • This year…as all others (4)

    This year as all others, we pretended to have answers to everything. Did we? This year, we continued to spit words and eat them, like the dog that waddles back to gobble its vomit.

    This year, we quoted Nietzsche, Plato, Disreali among others to garnish our columns while we did all we can to silence true-born dissent on our news pages and news networks, lest we incur the ire of irate benefactors.

    This is the year we ennobled the thieving statesman and denied the patriot the plaudits we save for noble compatriots. This is the year we celebrated underachievers as the best of overachievers. This year, we celebrated the vanities of dim-witted celebrities on front-pages of our national newspapers.

    Here goes the year we exhausted newsprint and priceless airtime to glamorize the shenanigans of “society bigwigs and small wigs” although we cannot tell and still cannot tell, the simplest manifestations of our news practice, on say, the vendor who markets the newspaper or the child-labourer to whom Universal Basic Education (UBE) remains an everlasting fantasy.

    This is the year we feted the northern mafia, eastern cabal, western gerontocracy, and south-south uprising, as usual, even as they undermined our collective dreams and everything that nationhood and ambition had ever bestowed us.

    Beyond our elegant words and brazen manifestations of high character, our practice is modeled after some greedy few’s cartography of citizenship than by any internal dynamic of allegiances. Hence our misinterpretation of the social contract between the Fourth Estate and every other estate charged with the administration and supervision of our nation-state.

    Thus this year as all others, we hid behind interviews, ‘big interviews,’ to abdicate our responsibilities to the Nigerian public. This is the year we taught the public to feast and digest perversion because we believe it’s what they love to do best; because we know if we treat them to more depravity, they will become more willing participants, and we would get more adverts and keep smiling to the banks.

    This year as all others, we turned a blind eye and conveniently lost our voice as creatures running the three arms of government squandered public fund to feed their gluttony. This year, as all others, we watched unperturbed as most of our colleagues ennobled and defended with their lives, the rights of the ruling class to pilfer our chests and rob us silly because leaders of men like them deserve to eat and dwell like no ordinary man.

    This year, President Goodluck Jonathan and his coterie of tin gods and goddesses afflicted our lives with ineptitude and savagery. In response, we cry ourselves hoarse twisting logic and lip service for and against President Jonathan; eventually, we lose our voices to racism and confusion. Mr. President’s kinsmen believe Nigeria should get with the programme; a South-south man is in power and everything he does should be accepted unquestionably; “it is our time to chop,” they say.

    This is the year in which our brothers in the north-east tirelessly blew to death our mothers and daughters, sons and fathers in the market place, schools, on the playground, in our bedrooms and houses of worship in the name of politics and religion. This is the year in which our brothers in the south-east determinedly kidnapped our wives and daughters, mothers and fathers, sons and heirs apparent, for a ransom, in pursuit of unearned affluence. This is the year in which our brothers in the southwest habitually mortgaged our future on the altar of politics, personal and sectarian greed. This year as all others, we refused to dissect these maladies, in the interest of our nation and thus helped the world to understand why we are regarded as the inheritors in whose hands the heritage dies and everything fails.

    This year, we affirmed those dreadful points our internal and external publics love to make; that we have become inept, mediocre, irredeemably shorn of truth and uprightness in our work. This year, we affirmed that we are amoral and somewhat intellectually challenged by our ethnic and intellectual bigotry.

    This year, we failed to actualize press freedom because it was socio-politically incorrect to do so. This year as all others, we failed to acknowledge that our survival or death as a nation is undeniably entwined with the tenor of practice and citizenship of the Nigerian press.

    This year as all others, I make a case for re-sensitization of the Nigerian media. It is time we dismembered our clan of the shameless breed. I speak of the almighty charlatan who believes that the status quo should be sustained ad infinitum because characters like him deserve the right to unquestionable practice.

    I do not wish that the press be gagged; I suggest no such arbitrariness – even if I do, it would hardly matter because we go through the practice, gagged.

    We are our worst enemies. In spite of everything, we choose to play god. That is why “dogs don’t eat dogs” in our Fourth Estate although it’s okay if we choose to eat the entrails of a few ordinary Nigerians and almighty benefactors, like the unfortunate adulterer caught pants down even as we underreport thieving bankers stealing from wretched folk to enrich their privileged peers.

    I hope we find the courage to report; “The Rot in the Media.” I hope we find the courage to report that for every kobo looted by government, in our public and private sectors, the press gets to have its share however meager it is. Dateline: media parleys, press conferences and governors’ roundtables.

    If we could passionately and conscientiously monitor our affairs daily that we may not digress and put to shame our practice, wouldn’t journalism be much better? Were we humane enough to improve our welfare and conditions of service, wouldn’t our journalists be dignified and our practice nobler?

    It’s time we asked: “Who is a journalist?” and aspire to an untainted definition of it. It’s time we redefined what level of knowledge, qualification and professionalism is expected of a journalist. It’s time we ascertained what manner of passion channels the direction of our news practice.

    It’s time we refused to humour such society that continually disrespects us and treats us as disposable pawns in its grand scheme of themes. Come 2014, shall we continue to service the depravity of folk for whom our pens write maladies at the expense of melodies impoverished folk would die to have us write about – that they might fare better?

    Will 2014 mutate like today and our immediate past? Shall we remain intellectual hit men of every hoodlum with towering cash? Shall we become cliff-hangers to take the portrait of every looter and celebrity nincompoop with a promising smile? Shall we remain the media managers that pay poorly even as we label expatriate firms, slave-drivers?

    Next year, will the masses stare at our cover pages resignedly, knowing they would never hear or feel the infinitesimal clangor of freed hope because we are, as usual, nothing more than an aberration of their desperate circumstances? Shall we continue to speak from both sides of the mouth? Shall we continue to eat like idiots at the feast of the one who calls us “idiot?”