The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Big Brother’s guinea fowls (1)

    Where is nothing to distinguish the Big Brother Africa (BBA) house from a henhouse except that the inmates seem human and at once endowed with the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the guinea fowl – if I may insult the poor animal by comparing it with them.

    However, despite the guinea fowl’s predilection to brutishness, it is not so completely enslaved and brazen like the BBA house ‘inmate.’ Big brother, while showing them up as disposable lab rats, treats BBA contestants as ‘housemates’ but reality instructs that every participant in the Big Brother ‘experiment’ is captive to inordinate greed, poverty of the intellect and soul, lust for unearned riches and acclaim, and the ever domineering, voyeuristic and faceless “big brother.”

    Participants in the BBA show like their counterparts world over, elevate narcissism and absurdity to unimaginable degrees. Inmates take their bath naked knowing videos and images of their bath are being broadcasted to the world via digital satellite television. They indulge in unprotected and presumably consequence-free sex, disgraceful bickering, rivalry, and frittering away of precious time.

    This further emphasizes the kindred spirit they share with the guinea fowl although the latter seem surprisingly elevated in character than the average BBA inmate. Guinea fowls hardly bicker because they are known to evolve and adhere religiously to a pecking order. The guinea fowl is a proud creature; unlike the BBA inmate, it rarely mates in the open. You will seldom, if ever, see it breed. When it does, it’s super-quick and can be easily mistaken for a swift little scuffle.

    Wonder what the guinea fowl would think of BBA inmates. Take Beverly Osu for instance, the character who claimed to have done Nigeria proud at the recently concluded BBA’s “The Chase” sloth-fest; Beverly in a recent interview claims thus: “I made Nigeria proud.”

    Beverly generated buzz by her actions in the BBA house. In 91 days, she managed to treat the world to her best kept secrets, and of course, a steamy and controversial sexual encounter she had with Angelo Collins, a South African inmate. Steamy pictures and videos of the two smooching in a bathtub are still been viewed and downloaded on the world wide web as you read.

    Although she claims she never had sex with the South African, Beverly maintains that she has no regrets for her conduct in the house. She quips, “All of us take our baths naked. So I shouldn’t be different because I went for a reality show. I shouldn’t be different from every other person, because I didn’t bring out my videos, Big Brother did so I should not be judged, and I represented Nigeria well.”

    You could be forgiven for thinking the argument was made by an obtuse person, for the digestion and understanding of equally dim-witted folk. Beverly’s argument reveals among other things, how the mind and intellect of many a contemporary youth works. The contemporary Nigerian youth represents an abnegation of late Italian poet, Dante Alighieri’s caution: “Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

    True, only brutes (animals) enjoy the exclusive preserve of ignorance and shamelessness in matters pertaining to sexual instincts, violence and other base impulses that relegate the brute to the bottom of nature and creation’s pecking order. However, current realities reveal an increasing permissiveness and blurring of lines between the human and the animal, the virtuous and debauched.

    While it’s disconcerting that her mother sees nothing wrong with her conduct, it would be amusing to know how Beverly would justify the morality and benefits of going nude and engaging in a sexual act before the camera and millions of viewers across the world, to her children and grand children, when eventually they get to see the video.

    Notoriety is the tool that Beverly, like her predecessors from Nigeria, sought to exploit in a desperate bid to win the much coveted $300, 000 BBA winner-takes-all prize. Notoriety is the resource by which she sought to attain wealth and acclaim. And even though she failed, Beverly predictably emerges from the show as a celebrity of sort.

    No sooner than she was booted out than Nigerian newspapers swooped on her, splashing syndicated interviews of the BBA evictee across one or two pages, each story struggling to garner for her, unquestionable acclaim and soft-landing. She reportedly hopes to exploit the situation to her advantage: “Before I left, I had a show called ‘Beverly Says’ and I’m back to push it. If you guys watched Big Brother, you would be very sure that I can act, so I’d go into movies, but then, I have to finish school because I’m in my 200 level,” she was quoted in a recent interview.

    Beverly’s statement, particularly her reference to her acting ability, no doubt reveals that BBA, contrary to its claims of being a social experiment that thrives on truth and mirroring reality, is actually a scripted TV show in which every participant puts up an act before the camera, as conditioned by the contest provisions and their frenzied lust for the outrageous prize money.

    Beverly like many contemporary celebrity hopefuls seeks to float upon “hype,” which is really the ubiquitous journalist turned publicist’s gas – and which is maniacally deployed oftentimes, to set afloat an image and personality that doesn’t quite exist. Hype, like Epstein aptly notes, is what gives us a new class or hierarchical categorization of celebrities.

    Beverly, despite the widespread condemnations trailing her conduct in the BBA house, helps perpetuate the myth that accidental celebrity or fame junkies are glaring indicators that there are always acceptable shortcuts to riches and the fulfillment of our wildest fantasies. And this relative reality is propelled by the public’s morbid fascination with celebrity worship. Where the object of interest excites inadequate controversies and passion for adulation, the public has learnt to recreate the object of their fascination into the ideal celebrity icon or superstar of their dreams.

    This no doubt substantiates Dostoevsky’ s wisdom: “So long as man remains free,” Dostoyevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship.”

    Is a character like Beverly really worthy of the good and bad press she currently enjoys? Is she even worthy of being the subject of discourse on this page? If so, this is bad news.

    The camera has created a culture of celebrity and the internet is establishing a culture of connectivity. The convergence of both technologies perpetuates contemporary man’s insatiable lusts for unearned acclaim and affluence. These facilities are effectively deployed by Endemol, the brain behind the BB concept, in desensitizing millions of viewers and participants towards perverse sex in its social re-conditioning and re-validation exercise.

    Big brother blurs the line that distinguishes the average human from an animal. Thus we become real to ourselves by obsessing about and wishing on the unreal. The great social abnormality and terror today, is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right; if the property that grounded the self in romanticism was sincerity, and in modernism was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility. But what manner of visibility would drive a Nigerian youth like Beverly to the brink of impropriety?

  • Fani-Kayode Vs. self-serving Igbo elite

    Please tell Gbogungboro (the masked rambler without phone number) that the positive contributions the Igbos made to Lagos becomes obvious even when viewed from the prism of recent superficial events. How does Lagos look like when Igbos goes home for Christmas? Did your banks not collapse when Igbos withdrew their money to go home during the Abiola saga? The man must have studied perverted history at UCL. Be reminded that your Hausa masters are still around the corner, lest you forget. We are not unmindful that you will, as it is your habit, treacherously team up with them against the Igbos’ (08027188222)

    I missed this columnist’s piece of August 22 titled ‘Letter to the Igbo nation by a friend’. It was the above reaction which the reader probably expected me to forward to the ‘masked rambler’. That prompted me to search for the said article. The summary: As a people not known to have developed kingdom and cities, very little was known of Igbo history until Professor Adiele Afigbo’s major work which established Igbo had no contact with people outside their immediate neighbourhood; that the Aworis, a Yoruba sub group, established a kingdom in Lagos Peninsular in the 12th century which by the 19th century had become an important trading post for the Europeans; that the British that used force to establish dominance over Lagos in 1851 went ahead in1861 to sign a treaty of cession with a Lagos king and in 1914 made Lagos the capital of Protectorate of Nigeria. The Igbos who, like other Nigerian groups, only started coming to Lagos in the 1920s, Gbogun gboro contended couldn’t have been responsible for turning Lagos from a jungle to a city as averred by Dr Ezeife and that Lagos could not have been no man’s land as claimed by Kalu Uzor Kalu.

    I think, Gbogun gboro should have also reminded the two self-serving Igbo leaders that the Yoruba nation itself was, according to P. C. Lloyd, more culturally developed than Europe as at the time of the coming of the Europeans, if we use urbanisation as index of measurement.

    It is not as if that alone would have cured the much abused ordinary Igbos of their feeling of persecution complex of God-ordained leaders of Africa persecuted in Nigeria by the Yoruba and Hausa Fulani out of envy as their self serving leaders had repeatedly drummed into their ears. The exploitation of the fears, infirmities and weaknesses of thousands of Igbos who live and face uncertainties in strangers’ land by their more privileged elite have gone on for far too long. This dates back to Zik’s arrival in 1934 when they needed a spokesman while the emerging educated Igbo elite were also scheming for positions in the approaching independent Nigeria.

    As it was then, so it is today. Uzor Kalu, Dr Ezeife like Zik, Ozumba Mbadiwe and other self-centred Igbo leaders have only one thing in common- demonising others for the failure of Igbo leadership to mobilise their people for the development of their area. Uzor Kalu’s hypocrisy about fighting the Igbo cause, following confrontation with Lagos State government over failure to pay land charges on his palace in an exclusive haven of the rich in Lagos, is not different from Ozumba Mbadiwe who built a mansion comically christened ‘Palace of the people’ in the midst of his people’s squalor, from the proceeds of federal property he bought in Ijora, Lagos, and sublet back to the Federal Government at a scandalous higher rate. How did an inquiry into the diversion of Eastern State money to ACB, owned by Zik, his children and his friend, Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu, promote the cause of poor Igbos?

    Ozumba Mbadiwe and self-serving Igbo leaders poisoned the minds of three generation of Igbo over the false claim that Awo and Yoruba betrayed Zik and therefore Igbos, after the parliamentary election into the Western State House of Assembly in 1951. “I witnessed how Awo and Yoruba betrayed Zik in the Western House in 1952’, Chinua Achebe declared. But, what both Igbo celebrated leaders did not state was that at the end of the 1951 parliamentary election, A.M.A. Akinloye led a delegation of those elected on the platform of his Ibadan Peoples Party to Zik. They insisted they would only consider a coalition with NCNC if he gave an undertaking to appoint a prominent Yoruba NCNC member as Premier of the West. Zik, supported by prominent Igbo NCNC members, insisted on becoming the Premier of the West without satisfactorily addressing the misgivings of Akinloye group about how an Igbo man would speak for the Igbos and the Yoruba at the centre while Hausa/Fulani speak for the north.

    That we operate a federal arrangement underscores the fact that we are not one. But like the proverbial ostrich, we have paid little attention to the warning of Ahmadu Bello that we must try to understand our differences. We demonise those who say the truth by labelling them tribalists as if it is not the virtues of tribes we set out to celebrate when we adopted federalism as a system of government. We eulogise those who fraudulently claim to be Nigerians first, a strategy to acquire oil blocks, contracts and wield political power in Abuja without representing anyone.

    Fani-Kayode’s celebration of the virtues of the Yoruba is the very essence of federalism. That does not make him an Igbo hater. Neither does he become one by stating documented facts; that the January 1966 selective senseless killings of non-Igbo military officers and non-Igbo politicians led to the vengeance coup of July 1966 and the mindless reprisal killings of Igbo military officers; that the Igbo political elite led by Nwafor Orizu, the Acting president, for selfish reasons, instead of swearing in Zana Bukar Dipcharimma as the Acting Prime Minster as provided for by the constitution sided with Ironsi, a commander-in-chief who, after foiling a coup, claimed he could not guarantee the safety of the surviving ministers unless he was given full powers as Head of State. From hindsight, can we not now conclude that Ironsi’s failure only vindicated Ahmadu Bello’s admonition when Ozumba Mbadiwe and others were lobbing for him that Nigeria would regret if he was foisted on the country as Commander-in-Chief?

    The problem has always been that the Igbo elite, while eating with 10 fingers hardly take a principled position on any national issue that affects their Igbo people. In 1959, they entered into a coalition with NPC precisely because of what Igbo elite stood to gain. They did the same in 1979. On both occasions when the coalition collapsed, Igbo serving ministers refused to resign their positions as directed by their parties. They were partners-in-crime with Babangida over the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Abiola’s victory. They served as lackeys to Abacha’s despicable regime with the Ikemba himself serving as an errand boy for Abacha in Europe. In all these, it was about what was in it for the Igbo elite and not the people. In the current political dispensation, there is no difference between APGA and PDP, with the relative ease with which notable Igbos like Chukwuma Soludo, Dora Akunyili, moved from the latter to the former to contest election.

    On the issue of restructuring, the Igbo elite have remained the most ambivalent. Despite the fact that it was former Vice-President Ekwueme that recommended a six-geopolitical zone structure for Nigeria, the dominant tendency in Igbo land prefers the easier path –crumbs from the Federal Government than the more difficult task of mobilising their people towards turning their own territory to Taiwan of Nigeria.

    If we don’t understand where we are coming from, we will likely not know where we are going. I think after three generations of falsehood, today’s Igbo youths should search for the truth and raise some critical questions. For instance, would their leaders who schemed out Eyo Ita, a minority Premier of the East have accepted Prince Adeleke Adedoyin or Dr Ibiyinka Olorun-Nimbe the two NCNC members that defeated and refused to step down for Zik in the 1952 National Parliament election, as Premier of the East in 1952? What was the role of the Igbo leaders in the unjust incarceration of Awo whose only sin was his mobilisation of the oppressed minorities for self-actualisation within the greater Nigeria nation? What was the role of the Igbo elite in the dismemberment of the old Western Region while ignoring the demand for self-actualistion of Efiks, Ibibios and Ijaw that constitute about 35 percent of the population of the then East? How come their leaders knew so little about the culture and history of the Yoruba with whom they had lived to have assumed Awo had the power to declare an Oduduwa State?

  • Before America attacks Syria

    Before America attacks Syria

    President Obama is on the verge of firing American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria. This is in response to claims by the US government that the al-Assad regime in Syria is responsible for the August 21 chemical attacks on its own citizens. Anyone who has seen video clips of the large number of fatalities of the chemical (gas nerves) attacks, including hundreds of innocent children, men, and women, will be horrified by the attacks. There can be no justification for either side in the protracted Syrian civil war resorting to the use of chemical weapons. It is deplorable, barbaric, and morally unacceptable. The international response to this horrifying chemical attacks has been one of outrage. Nigeria has joined other nations in condemning the chemical attacks as morally reprehensible. Since 1925, the Geneva Protocol, signed by nearly 200 states, has banned the use of chemical weapons in wars. So, it is easy to understand the outrage and anger of the international community over the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It calls for some international response.

    But before launching American cruise missiles against Syria, President Obama should pause to consider whether a direct military response is appropriate and necessary. He should carefully consider the following factors and possible consequences of any missiles attack on Syria. First, though the evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria is now irrefutable, there is no clear and unambiguous evidence that the al- Assad regime is the source of such attacks. The US says the Syrian al- Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attacks. But it has, so far, not been able to produce any direct proof of this. The al- Assad regime has flatly denied the charge. Russia, a strong ally of President Bashir al-Assad, has also called into question American claims that it was the al-Assad regime that used chemical weapons against its own people. In addition, as I write this the report of the UN inspection team to Syria has not yet been released. President Obama should wait for this crucial report even though it may not be able to ascertain the real source of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. American military attack on Syria would, in the circumstances, be somewhat premature and would lack the necessary international support and moral legitimacy. It would not be justified.

    Secondly, there is strong opposition even in the US to any precipitate military action on the part of the US authorities. The polls in the US show that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not support any air strikes on Syria by the US. The American Congress is equally divided on any military action by the US against Syria. Although President Obama says he does not really need Congressional approval to attack Syria, America is a democracy and it is better for him to get Congressional support before launching his missiles against Syria. Without such support Americans will be divided over the war. In Iraq, President Bush went to war claiming that the US had clear evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime was in possession of chemical weapons. No such weapons were eventually discovered in Iraq in a war that led to heavy casualties on both sides. Now, many Americans do not wholly believe the claim by the US government that the al- Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attack in Syria. The opponents of the planned air strikes against Syria argue that intelligence is not fact, and that, as in Iraq, America’s intelligence regarding who used the chemical weapons in Syria may be flawed.

    Thirdly, America’s European allies have not shown much enthusiasm for an air strike against Syria. In Britain, the strongest ally of the US in Europe, the House of Commons has defeated and rejected a recent motion by Prime Minister David Cameron for Britain’s involvement in the proposed air strikes. Germany, Italy, and many other European countries will not join the US in the air strikes. At its recent meeting in St. Petersburg, in Russia, the G20 was equally divided on the proposed US air strikes. Only France appears keen on the air strikes but it can only offer the US limited military support. NATO will not be involved in any US air strikes against Syria. That will leave the US badly isolated. The lack of diplomatic support at the UN for a US air strike in Syria should also be taken into account. A US war against Syria would, in the circumstances, be morally untenable.

    Fourthly, although President Obama says the attacks will be ‘limited and measured’ US cruise missiles attack on Syria will almost certainly lead to some collateral damage, including the loss of innocent civilian lives. There could be some American casualties too as the Assad forces will resist American military attacks on Syria. In that event, the US will be obliged to send American boots into Syria, contrary to the assurances of President Obama that American troops will not be sent to Syria. Already, over 100,000 civilians have died in this civil war. An American air strike in Syria will lead to more fatalities. That cannot be the intention of the planned air strike by the US, which is intended ostensibly to save lives.

    Fifthly, US air strikes could lead to increased international involvement in the Syrian civil war. America is already supplying the Syrian rebels with arms, while Russia has also been supplying the Assad regime with weapons. If America attacks Syria, there will be some military response from both Russia, and Iran, al-Assad’s strong allies in the region. Israel will find it difficult to stay out of a widening conflict that is so close to its borders. Turkey, which is trying to cope with nearly 2 million Syrian refugees, will not stand pat over the war. It will seek some involvement in the ensuing military conflict. Hezbollah is already fighting with pro-Assad troops in the country. The Arab World, which is still battling with the consequences of the ‘Arab Spring”, will be further divided over the war. A grave regional security situation in the volatile Middle East will become even more complex. The Arab League has expressed its concerns over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but has fallen short of endorsing America’s planned military action in Syria. Such widespread foreign intervention will increase the gravity of the civil war in Syria. It may be inconclusive and could go on for years.

    The Americans say regime change is not their strategic objective in the planned air strikes against Syria. If that is the case then, from the US perspective an air strike against Syria will be meaningless. What is the point of the US simply knocking off chemical weapons facilities that can be easily replaced by both sides of the conflict? Obviously, the US will need to attack other Syrian military facilities, including military communications and air space, in the war that is bound to follow. This could then become a total war the objective of which will have to be a regime change in Damascus, contrary to the assurances of President Obama. If President al-Assad is removed from power, then the Americans will have to move in to sort out the mess there. In fact, the American military authorities may be working towards a total war in Syria aimed at the removal from power of President al-Assad. But this is wrong as the US has no vital national interests in Syria that is deserving of a war.

    The Americans are claiming a high moral ground in this matter. Specifically, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said on television in Qatar recently that one of President Clinton’s regrets was that when he was in office he did not stop the genocide in Rwanda by sending American troops there. But Clinton learnt from the embarrassing and humiliating experience of American soldiers captured and paraded on TV in Somalia when he intervened there. To whip up emotional American and international support for the air strikes John Kerry also said that World War II would have been prevented if Britain and France had stood up against Nazi Germany and had not ‘surrendered’ to Hitler at Munich. This comparison of el-Assad with Hitler is invidious. It is the kind of specious argument advanced in 1956 by the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden when, in concert with France and Israel, he invaded Egypt over the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, claiming that Nasser was another Hitler On that occasion the US refused to support Britain and the invasion collapsed. Nasser prevailed. That terrible misjudgment and blunder over the Suez crisis was to end Eden’s brilliant political career. He died a few years later, a broken man. He had drawn the wrong conclusions from Hitler and Munich. President Obama should not make the same mistake.

    Besides, the situation in Syria now is different from the European crisis before World War II. The civil war in Syria does not threaten international peace and security. The US should also be reminded of its desperate use of napalm in Vietnam, against the 1925 Geneva Protocol, to save its tottering ally there from collapsing. In addition, it was the US that supplied Saddam Hussein of Iraq, then its ally, with chemical weapons for use against both Iran and its own people, the Kurdish Turks. The US should also be reminded that Israel is in possession of chemical weapons and will not hesitate to use it if it were to find itself with its back to the wall. In that event would the US threaten Israel with air strikes?

    The response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria has to be global and not limited to one major power. Russia and China also have strategic interests in the Middle East that they will defend. The US should not arrogate to itself the role of the world’s policeman. It should work for a consensus at the UN over this matter instead of resorting to unilateral military action that has the potential of widening the war. The Arab League should be given all diplomatic support and a more central role to secure peace in Syria and in the entire region. The UN inspectors should be stationed in Syria to prevent further chemical attacks. The UN secretary general has suggested a way out of the crisis; that if found the Chemical weapons should be taken out of Syria and destroyed. The big powers should agree not to supply either side with arms and ammunitions and work for a peaceful settlement of the Syrian civil war. Before attacking Syria President Obama must pause and think hard whether the military action he is contemplating will actually serve American strategic interests in the Arab World. After Iraq and Afghanistan, the US should undertake a serious review of its Middle East policy so as not to lose further grounds there.

  • PDP’s macabre dance

    It was predicted long ago that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will implode because of the way it was being run. Expectedly, PDP dismissed such talks as balderdash, saying as the ‘’largest party in Africa’’ people were jealous of it. In describing itself like that, PDP was referring to its size. Indeed, it is not only large in size, but also monstrous in shortchanging others, rigging and everything that is bad in politics.

    Since 1999, PDP and its members have consistently shown that they can go to any length in order to get to power. The route to power does not matter to them; what matters is that they should acquire power either by hook or by crook. So, the use of foul means is not strange to them. They are at home rigging and snatching ballot boxes during elections. There is nothing they cannot do to win an election, even killing is part of the game.

    Is that how to be Africa’s largest party? Shouldn’t a party which prides itself as such set good examples? PDP is not bothered by morality. To the party, the end justifies the means. This is why it has been coming to power since 1999 through crude and cruel means. As a party interested in power for power sake, PDP has no scruples whatsoever. It uses and dumps its members at will once they outlive their usefulness.

    Its national leaders are not spared this treatment. Many of them were discarded like mere tissues after being used by those they helped into power. Ask Chief Solomon Lar; ask Chief Barnabas Gemade; ask Chief Audu Ogbe; ask Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo; ask Chief Vincent Ogbulafor. These were leaders of the party at one time or the other who were booted out for not doing the bidding of the then president. The party confers a lot of power on its elected members in government, especially the president and governors.

    Any serving president elected on its platform is its national leader and the governors its leaders in their states. So, under such arrangement, its national chairman who does not see eye to eye with the president is an endangered specie. Such a chairman is removed from his post with ignominy. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was brought into the party by those who thought they could manipulate him, were disappointed as he turned out to be their nemesis.

    Obasanjo removed or was instrumental to the removal of some chairmen like Lar, Gemade and Ogbeh. Only Ahmadu Ali, who is a former soldier like him, survived his high-handedness. Nwodo and Ogbulafor, who served under a different president, also got the Obasanjo treatment. Ogbulafor, who boasted that PDP will be in power for 60 years, did not stay long to realise his goal! So far, the party has been in power for 15 yeasrs, counting from 1999. Will it still be in power in the next 45 years?

    I doubt it because it is not likely that PDP will return to power in 2015 if the newly registered All Progressive Congress (APC) and the other opposition parties can capitalise on the PDP crisis to push out the party from power in the next elections. It won’t be easy but it can be done. With nine national chairmen in 15 years, PDP has shown that it is not a party to be taken serious. Only Alhaji Haliru Mohammed and Alhaji Kawu Baraje, who served in acting capacity, enjoyed a peaceful tenure. Others fought tooth and nail for their survival just as Alhaji Bamanga Tukur is doing right now.

    No matter how hard Tukur fights, his days in office are numbered. For now, it may seem as if President Goodluck Jonathan is backing him, but mark my word, the president will soon ditch him in order to realise his aim of seeking reelection in 2015. Tukur is still holding on to power because of Jonathan’s support and he knows that. Since he knows where his bread is buttered he will do everything to remain in the president’s good books, including disowning his people from the North, who are opposed to Jonathan’s return in 2015.

    As long as Tukur remains on Jonathan’s side, the seven PDP governors and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar can only bark and not bite him. In fact, if you ask me, I will say Tukur is not PDP’s problem. The party’s problem right now is the president, who because of his ambition has put Tukur in a tight corner. Tukur is afraid of confronting the president because he does not want to lose his job. To him, the president is a bigger evil, while those opposed to Jonathan’s planned return in 2015 are the lesser evil, which he is sure he can take on.

    His confidence stems from the assurance of presidential support when the chips are down. Tukur is a man buffeted on all fronts. In his home state of Adamawa, in his Northeast zone and at the national level, he is all alone. This political infighting has exposed the underbelly of the PDP. The Abubakar Kawu Baraje – led new PDP has shown that the Tukur – led PDP is a big for nothing balloon, which needs only a prick of the pin to burst.

    The PDP umbrella is leaking

    because of the tiny holes

    punched in it by the Baraje faction. It is only a matter of time before those holes become bigger and the umbrella is torn to shreds. With the new PDP attacking it from one side and the APC and the others from the other side, the PDP is as good as gone. But the opposition must stand firm so as to realise its dream of sending the PDP packing in 2015. The opposition can bury the PDP alive, for after all, the party has dug its own grave. It will be a long and bitter battle, but the opposition and the PDP faction can pull it through if they get their act right.

    Troubled by his conscience

     Offa in Kwara State is a politically enlightened town.

    Its people know what they want and they usually go all out for it. When it comes to politics, they have always aligned with the progressives. One of its prominent sons, the late Chief J.S. Olawoyin, for years led the town on the progressive side of politics. A die – hard Awoist, J.S, as he was popularly known, played a major role in the political emancipation of his people. It is these politically aware people that some vote robbers want to cheat in the last August 31 Offa Local Government Area rerun. In the last 10 years, Kwara has been a PDP state, but it was not always so. It became a PDP state following the rift between the late Governor Mohammed Lawal and the late Kwara strongman, Dr Olusola Saraki. The late Saraki made the late Lawal governor on the platform of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). The late Saraki left ANPP for the late Lawal and joined PDP for the sake of his son, Senator Bukola, who wanted to contest for governor then. The late Lawal lost in the power game.

    The Offa rerun was a supremacy battle of sorts between PDP and APC because it was the first election the mega party formed from the merger of Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress of Progressive Change and ANPP will contest against PDP. So, the parties threw all they had into the election. Everything went smoothly until the electoral agency began to footdrag over the declaration of result. That was the first sign of trouble. When the result eventually came, it was announced on Kwara Radio! Why would the electoral umpire declare result at a radio station and not its office if it has nothing to hide? Since the announcement, Offa has been boiling. Hardly a day passes without a protest in the town. There was a twist in the tale when one of the so – called winners, Afolabi Jimoh, confessed that he did not win the election. The ‘councillor – elect’ for Shawo Southwest said the APC candidate won. In other climes, that is enough to void his election and declare his opponent the winner. One week after Jimoh’s confession, it is mum from the electoral umpire.

    Will the matter end like this? Will Jimoh stand by his confession if the matter gets to the tribunal? Is this an indication of what will happen in 2015? What are the police doing about this case, especially Jimoh’s confession? Have they started investigating his claim? Jimoh confessed because he has a conscience, but his confession will amount to nothing if the stolen mandate is not recovered from him.

  • The demons within

    No one could teach humanity to our callous clan. Nobody could teach reality to a land that dies of dreams of plunder. Who could teach direction to a people that thrive on monstrosity and misdirection?

    As we approach 2015, we enthuse about the possibility of rebirth. Our talk is of a new dawn but if we look closely enough, we shall find that there is no light in the skies yet. Last sunrise – at the beginning of the current dispensation – the sun betrayed a hint of tiredness. It seemed to have withdrawn into some new distance – like the North Star that suddenly discovers the unworthiness of our pirate ship for its guiding light. We are still that great ship with no certain commitment to compass and outlast our course’s most hideous storms.

    As we approach 2015, every moment uncoils as that in which we return to sup on yesterday’s vomit, like starved greyhounds. We are recycling the same old faces, same old politics, same old hurt. Every minute passes like that in which seedlings and crop shoots fear the late and early rainstorms. Our young expects too little, still; and our old still indulge in pleasurable reminiscences even as they discover no logic to justify that which they had forsaken and squandered.

    Come 2015, we expect that things will change for the better. But nothing will change for the better because we have appointed career undertakers to midwife our new dawn, again. Come 2015, more promises will be broken and fear’s moonflower will spread and attain full blossom, till our proverbial dawn illumines as familiar dusk of compromise. And that is because we have refused to change.

    An in-depth scrutiny into our psyches would reveal the depth of our affinity to leadership we have. Our thoughts, politics and actions, while lacking in philosophy and conviction betrays on one hand, wanton inclinations to aid and abet our current leadership, and on the flipside, an excessive confidence in our personal judgment and contempt for the advice and criticism of others.

    Our pains are of substandard education, mass unemployment, sky-rocketing inflation, pervasive poverty, insecurity, crime, high infant and maternal mortality, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) epidemic, cyber –fraud, institutional fraud, etc. To these, we have proffered countless solutions.

    We have suggested population control. We have suggested greater government support and presence in the Niger Delta claiming that since it is Nigeria’s only reliable source of national income, the federal government ought to devote greater time, money and other resources to the region.

    We have suggested that we paid more attention to our ailing agricultural sector. We claim it would do us great good if we could revivify our dying cocoa industry, collapsed groundnut pyramids and struggling oil palm sector. Not to forget our persistent rant about our abject neglect of our tourist attractions. It’s amusing to see us mount the soap-box in fickle fits of contempt – in our liquor and rant-activated pubs, living-rooms, courtyards and pages of our sensational newsprints. We have perfected the art of lamentation, bandying angst and pitiful punch lines to bemoan our rudderless politics.

    What’s your poison? Nigeria’s leadership problem? Pervasive poverty? Endemic corruption? Religious upheavals cum perversion of faith? What is it that causes riotous incense to course through your brain? The abject rot of the Onyeama Coal Mine? The collapse of Ajaokuta Steel as well as other appendages to Nigeria’s steel sector? Our underperforming oil refineries and Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN)? What excites your grief? Our conduit-built and corruption-activated ministries?

    Nigeria ruins and stagnates like cocoyam sodden in a mud field and we continue to articulate textbook remedies to problems that are best resolved by truth, honesty and impeccable character. Today, we suggest a sovereign national conference or referendum to provide the forum by which we could redress the state of the union. What manner of redress do we seek? Many have suggested that we break-up. They claim we shall do better if we go our separate ways.

    Now picture the dissolution of our 53-year old union; what plenitude could it bring? What manner of peace, justice and stability could we derive from a relapse to humanity’s often wildest and best-forgotten enterprise?

    What would be our role in the new order? Shall we reinvent the millipede by calling it, ‘snake?’ Shall the lion cub become tomcat simply because it is kept as a house pet? We could reinvent ourselves as much as we like; we could secede by our terms as many times as we like; we could quote Nietzsche, Plato, Disreali et al and re-echo the idiosyncrasies of our favourite columnists for as long as it gets us to justify our cynicism and grief; nothing will change.

    Our lives shan’t get better. Nigeria won’t become the land of honey and milk we wish it would become until we change.

    It’s a fundamental nature of our society that we accept abnormality and debauchery as incontestable parts of our nature. Yet if we did not indulge in such abject perversions and pitiable evasions as our principle of moral agnosticism which imbues us to be tolerant of anything and everything, we could have matured enough in intellect and psyche to know how and why not to compromise between truth and falsehood, reason and irrationality.

    We could have attained such maturity that would enable us to understand that the values we project become the essence of our socio-politics and being – whether we like it or not. Every utterance we make, as our most humane and inhumane actions and reactions, intensify the simplicity or degeneracy of our individual perceptions, as well as the rationality and otherwise of politics we choose to scorn or celebrate.

    It needn’t be so hard to be good. But it is – simply because despite our touted morality, wisdom and predilection to evolve a quintessential civilization, we have lost direction. Knowingly, we scorn both our glaring and latent abilities to discern that proverbial path to the realization of the essence and undeniable benefits of being good. Consequently, our culture and our lives disintegrate for our lack of character.

    When we ennoble double-speak and refrain from praising men’s virtues and condemning their vices, our fraudulence declares and we foster the corruption of our larger society. No practicable and highfaluting panacea could resolve our most hideous realities until we attain the essence of goodness without being self-righteous.

    Simply put, there can be no compromise, however exquisitely couched, between us and the depravity we tolerate. Aiding and abetting corruption in the spirit of socio-economic and political expediency is hardly a compromise but a cowardly surrender to the elements that disintegrates and make bleak.

    Whether we like it or not, there can be no compromise or wanton sophistry acceptable on basic principles and fundamental issues. It’s time we desist from every conscious quest to improve the status quo from the deceitful springboard of compromise. The change we seek subsists in random and premeditated acts of goodness that we have learnt to forsake: like a citizen’s resoluteness to respect the traffic light and a local government chairman’s immutable passion to improve life at the grassroots – particularly when the world isn’t looking.

  • Of love, power and politics

    Of love, power and politics

    FIRST, a confession. I did not read the article that sparked the row between Femi Fani-Kayode, a chief, lawyer, former minister and public affairs analyst and Mrs. Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu. But, I have been following the altercation, which has fuelled a bigger disputation in restrooms, classrooms and newsrooms.

    A recapitulation: Fani-Kayode wrote an article in defence of the widely misconstrued –misconceived, some insist – “deportation” of some Anambra State indigenes from Lagos. He got a truckload of responses, some of them charging him with ethnic jingoism and others mincing no word in describing him as a tribalist. Not one to lose an argument so cheaply, the chief fired back. He said if he was a tribalist, he would not have had an “intimate relationship” with Mrs. Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Nigeria’s ambassador to Spain and pearl of the revered Eze Ndigbo Gburugburu and Ikemba Nnewi, Chief Emeka Odumegwu- Ojukwu – of exciting memories.

    Rather than resolve the matter, Fani-Kayode’s clarification was like adding salt to injury. Mrs. Odumegwu-Ojukwu, an ex-beauty queen, briefed her lawyers. They should sue Fani-Kayode for suggesting that they were lovers, a report said. The chief has taken up the gauntlet, setting the stage for a sensational legal battle.

    Trust Nigerians. They have refused to let the courts set the ball rolling. There are arguments everywhere on what “intimate relationship” means. Does it suggest a sexual affair? Platonic? Is it right for a man to claim to have had a “long standing and intimate relationship” with a woman who is married? Will saying so amount to lowering her esteem and damaging her reputation? Does anybody have the right to ask a man to explain what he means? What, in social parlance, does intimacy mean? Does it mean being in love? And what is love? Mere affection?

    When the matter eventually comes before the court, will Bianca be in the dock for cross-examination? What kind of questions will Fani-Kayode’s lawyers be asking her? Will she be beaming with those magical smiles that swept the great Ikemba off his feet? What will her lawyers be asking Fani-Kayode; to explain what he meant by “intimate relationship”? What is he likely to tell them? Will the court define this innocent, but sensitive phrase for the parties?

    Accused of having an affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, former United States President Bill Clinton hired the best lawyers money could fetch and mounted a moving defence to save his presidency. He said: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

    Clinton also said: “There is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship.” The lurid and erotic details of the scandal are so incredible that a respected family newspaper as The Nation would find it inappropriate to bother the reader about them. The main charge of perjury was spiced with legal definitions of sex to establish if an offence had been committed. For days, the salacious show went on and on before a grand jury. It was the biggest show on television.

    On August 17, 1998, Clinton admitted that he had an “improper physical relationship” with Lewinsky. He faced charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in the Congress. He was acquitted. He kept his job.

    Clinton was humbled. He was sober. It is worthy of note that all through the trauma, his wife, Hillary, stood by him. She saw the whole “political sex scandal” as a “vast right-wing conspiracy”. The power of love or – if you like – the love of power. Or both.

    Now a flashback. When the late President Umaru Yar’Adua was flown into Abuja in the dead of the night from Saudi Arabia where doctors were battling to save his life, so many questions were raised. Was it Hajia Turai’s show of love for a darling husband or a desperate attempt to grab power and use it by subterfuge? The latter turned out to be the case, following attempts to stop then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan from taking over power.

    All efforts to enforce the Constitution were resisted by a cabal headed by the Hajia. There was no doubt that she was in charge. Yar’Adua was not allowed to see people. People were not allowed to see him. The Villa propaganda machinery hit the overdrive. We were regaled with phantom stories of his fast recovery, how he was jogging for 30 minutes daily and how the doctors would soon certify him fit as a fiddle and he would be back at work. Then fate supervened. Yar’Adua died.

    Again, questions. Could he have made it if he was allowed to remain in the hospital and not hauled onto a plane and shipped home to retain his job? Who was running the show while His Excellency remained bedridden? Who signed the budget the late Yar’Adua was said to have signed? Who played what role in the Yar’Adua odyssey? We may never know.

    But that was a foreshadow of the Taraba situation. The story of how Governor Danbaba Suntai flew a plane that crashed on October 25, last year, got injured and was flown overseas where he spent 10months is well known. What is not clear is the state of His Excellency’s health. When he arrived to a tumultuous welcome the other day in Abuja, Suntai could only manage to raise his hand in a failed attempt to wave. He was helped off the plane. He spoke no word to anxious reporters. At the VIP Lounge with him was former minister Jerry Gana, beaming and chatting with Suntai who seemed to be paying no attention, just looking into empty space. Jet lag?

    Suntai got to Taraba and suddenly became active. He sent a letter to the House of Assembly, informing the lawmakers that he was back at work. He sacked the Executive Council, named a new Secretary to the State Government (SSG) and a new Chief of Staff (CoS). The governor remained holed up in the Government House where his wife, Hajia Hauwa, took charge.

    A video tape in which Suntai thanked the people for their support was released to the NTA. His voice was muffled as if he spoke with pains. When Adamawa Governor Murtala Nyako visited Suntai, he came out of the living room dejected. He was all tears. All attempts by lawmakers to see him were blocked, until it became obvious that the Hajia could no longer stop them. They said Suntai was not in a good shape. Deputy Governor Garba Umar announced that he was still in charge and that his boss could not have taken all the actions ascribed to him. Anarchy.

    Then, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stepped in. It summoned all the parties to the crisis to Abuja. Suntai was not there. Hajia Huawa was there. Eventually, the matter was settled on Tuesday. Umar will keep running the state but he must consult Suntai, the PDP peacemakers said. Where is the Constitution in all of this? What was at play – Hajia Hauwa’s love for her man or her love of power? We may never understand.

    In fact, it is this lack of understanding – ignorance, actually – that may have spurred some mischief makers, armchair critics and busybodies who will never mind their business because they think everybody’s business is theirs to attack the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, for demonstrating her love for the President.

    They have accused the amiable woman of fuelling the Rivers State crisis. It all began as a simple reprimand of Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi- the one the First Lady calls her son – who planned to demolish some structures in Okrika to pave the way for beautiful schools. She reportedly snatched the microphone and warned the governor to stop using the word demonnis, demonnis. Politicians latched onto that harmless scene and unleashed trouble on the state. A new commissioner of police was drafted in and, ever since, the state has had little peace.

    Those layabouts, aforementioned, have recently stepped up their game. They said the Abuja Peace Rally that was hailed at home and abroad as one of the potent weapons against terrorism was nothing but a campaign to boost President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. They ask: “Didn’t the President say he would brood no distraction as he vigorously pursues his transformation agenda?” “Is this love for the First Citizen or mere passion for power?”

    Unfortunately, the drafters of the much pilloried 1999 Constitution forgot –it may have been deliberate, anyway – to make provision for the role of love in power. Otherwise, all these arguments would never have been necessary.

    See why we need a new constitution?

    PDP and the Offa vote heist

    LAST Saturday’s rerun election in Offa Local Government of Kwara State was peaceful. The results were signed by the presiding officers and security agents. Of the 12 wards, the All Progressives Congress (APC) won 11 with 11,337 votes. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) got 4,710 votes.

    Instead of announcing the winner, the Returning Officer vanished. He resurfaced in Ilorin where a radio station proclaimed the PDP candidate winner. Apparently troubled by his conscience, one of the would-be councillors, who was awarded the phantom victory, Mr Afolabi Jimoh, told a press conference that he never won.

    Again, the PDP has shamelessly turned winners into losers and losers into winners. Abracadabra. There have been protests over this brigandage, lack of shame and disrespect for decency that have turned the PDP into a mother hen that kills her chicks and a house of crises. Unfortunately, the party is trying to drag Nigeria down with it.

    The state government should emulate Jimoh, surrender the stolen mandate, instal the real winner and apologise to the people. It is not too late.

  • The Peter Obe I knew

    Long before I joined the Daily Times in October, 1990, I had become familiar with the name Peter Obe. Who wouldn’t then? Peter Obe was a household name. Obe’s fame derived from his work as a press cameraman. He took worldclass pictures, which stood him out among his peers. Obe’s reputation made him famous. This is why people like me knew him long before we became reporters.

    By the time I joined the Daily Times, he was no longer in the now defunct conglomerate; but he was still active in the field. Obe was an all – rounder. He took political, social and sport photographs. Name the event, Peter Obe was there. Many, at least the older generation, will still remember seeing a man in shorts and sweat shirt and a hat, with several cameras dangling around his neck, running around the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, those days taking photographs during football matches.

    He was everywhere something big was happening. Whether an accident scene, whether a molue (the once – upon – a – time popular commercial bus in Lagos) plunged into the river, whether robbers were being shot at the Lagos Bar Beach, whether a political gathering of note, whether the Supreme Court was delivering judgment on a big case, whether there was a riot or fire, Peter Obe was there. People wondered whether he was a spirit because he was always on the spot where news was breaking.

    There was no event Peter Obe did not cover during his illustrious career. How did I know considering the wide gap in our ages? We will get to that story shortly. Obe took his work with all seriousness. He never allowed anything to come between him and his job. Even after his retirement from the Daily Times he still worked for the paper as if his life depended on the job. That was Peter Obe for you. Wherever he went, he went with his cameras and he had many.

    I knew him from afar in my early days at the Daily Times, but later became close to him. It was some seven or eight years after I joined the Daily Times that I became close to him. I had known him all along as Peter Obe, but at the Daily Times I got to know of his appellation, Exclusive. The appellation derived from the fact that he only took exclusive photographs. The photographs he took those days cannot be found in other papers except in the Daily Times.

    Exclusive took much pride in his job and this I could discern when I became close to him between 1997 and 2002. People of my generation called him Exclu Baba whenever he walked into the newsroom at the Daily Times corporate office on Agidingbi Road, Ikeja. Whenever he came, he came with pictures on the back on which were written the legend : ‘’Exclusive’’. Peter Obe took me under his wings as his son during our relationship.

    As News Editor and later Deputy Editor of the Daily Times, he made it a duty to see me in the office whenever he was around. Some of my colleagues became envious of me. Whenever they saw him parking his car, they will rush down to the newsroom, shouting, ‘’Lawi, baba e tide o’’, meaning ‘’Lawi, your father is here’’. Then Exclusive will bound in, in you guess right, his trade mark shorts, sweat shirt and a pair of canvass. He never came empty handed. Besides pictures for the paper, he would also bring me gifts. Usually, he branched at the Daily Times on his way back from his Igbara Oke hometown in Ondo State.

    During those visits, we will chat and chat. We talked about virtually everything under the sun. I was lucky to have people like him to guide me then. Exclusive, the famous artist/cartoonist, Mr Jossy Ajiboye and the late Akinlolu Aje, a moving encyclopaedia if there ever was one, and a contributor to Headlines, the historical journal in the Daily Times stable, were my Godsent guardians. I listened with rapt attention to the words of wisdom that poured forth from their mouths. In those difficult days in the Daily Times, they advised me to exercise patience, saying things will not continue like that. They believed that the paper will not die, but unfortunately the government killed the Daily Times.

    This is not the story of the Daily Times, but of Peter Obe. But there is no way we can divorce the story of Peter Obe from the story of the Daily Times, a paper, which he served diligently in good and bad times. So did Jossy Ajiboye and the late Aje. These men were totally loyal and committed to the Daily Times. It was not for want of something to do, but because I sense, they were sentimentally attached to that great institution. Obe was a rare breed. He didn’t look at the age difference between us in dealing with me. I consider myself lucky to have been close to him, Jossy Ajiboye and the late Aje.

    Those days whenever the trio gathered in my office, Peter Obe will say to me ‘’Lawi’’, he called me that too, ‘’ma fun Jossy ati Aje ni orogbo ati awon meat pie ti mo ko wa fun e’’, meaning ‘’don’t give Jossy Ajiboye and Aje out of the bitter kola and pastries I brought for you’’, and we will burst into laughter. Yes, whenever Exclu Baba was coming to the Daily Times, he always came with a load of bitter kola and pastries of all kinds for me. At a point, my office became where people came to look for bitter kola because they knew I will always have some in stock, courtesy of my father.

    When I spoke with Peter Obe on phone a few months ago, I felt bad after our discussion because I could barely hear him. His voice was hoarse, but I didn’t know that the end will come so soon. Peter Obe died on Sunday at 81. His death has robbed journalism of one of its greatest photographers ever. The history of the Nigerian media will be incomplete without the role played by Exclusive in the development of what is today known as photo – journalism.

    On Tuesday when I informed Jossy Ajiboye of Peter Obe’s death, he could only moan ‘’ah, Peter, ah Peter, ki olorun ko forun ke’’, meaning ‘’ah Peter, ah Peter, may his soul rest in peace’’. After making his own enquiries, he called back to ask: ‘’Nibo lo ku si, ilu e tabi eko?’’ I replied that Exclusive died in Lagos. Exclusive was among the best if not even the best in his trade.They don’t come better than he did. This is a big loss to the Daily Times family, journalism and the nation, which civil war years (1967 – 70) he captured in graphic details in his book: Civil War Pictures from Nigeria : A Decade of Crisis in Pictures. May he rest in the bosom of the Lord.

    Death so cruel

    Life is cruel and so is death. Last Sunday, a longstanding friend and colleague, Adebowale Adegoke, died in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, after many years of struggle. Debo died on the same day with Peter Obe. When the late Debo and people like us started out on this job, we began the hard way. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into then. We just considered ourselves lucky to have got a job then. It all began in The Punch, the lively paper for lively minds. We were young, vibrant men determined to make a career in journalism. Thank God we had masters like Dapo Aderinola (Baba Africa), Najim Jimoh and Demola Osinubi to mentor us. Things were difficult but we soldiered on with the belief that the future is bright.

    In our search for greener pastures, we moved to other papers. Like me, he also found his way to the Daily Times. He rose to Deputy Editor of the Sunday Times. Last Sunday, he died in Abeokuta, which became his home after years of working there. What a sad end to a life of struggle. Since our oga, Tunde Ipinmisho, broke the news of Debo’s death to me on Monday through a text, I have not ceased wondering how cruel life and death can be. My heart goes out to his wife, Yemisi and children. May God give them the fortitude to bear the loss. Adieu, Debo, till we meet to part no more.

     

  • N600 billion census budget outrageous

    The chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Festus Odimegwu said recently that he would need N600 billion to conduct the next census. This is at a time when the Federal Government through its act of omission or commission has shut down all state and federal universities in the country because it cannot find N87 billion being demanded by the teachers. It would not surprise me if this same Federal Government finds N600 billion to give to the census body when you cannot ride on any Nigerian road without running into huge craters and gutters. At the end of each census, we come up with spurious numbers that are not believed by anybody or believable at all. What is apparent in Nigeria is not always real, it is the case of the more you see, the less it counts. At election times, small states produce more votes than states that are much bigger and much more populous if only to get their preferred candidate elected.

    Apart from the census of 1956 which put Nigeria’s population at 32 million, all other censuses have been marred by forgeries. During enumeration of people, it is not uncommon for villages to contribute money to give to enumerators in order to boost their population figures and yet we call this a census. Enumeration of any kind in Nigeria is totally without integrity. When states are asked to come up with the number of school aged children, the figures given sometimes outstrip the population of the entire state. Any exercise requiring figures in Nigeria is usually manipulated because of the financial implications of figures in Nigeria. Would it not be better to save N600 billion and just get statisticians to give us projected population of Nigeria based on a baseline of 1952 and rate of increase at 3% per year or something of that sort rather than the spurious figures bandied around dishonestly by NPC?

    Nobody can swear on the figures of Nigeria’s population. Today, we are told that we are about 170 million but I do not believe it. I personally do not believe that Nigeria is more than 100 million; the remaining 70 million are ghosts as far as I am concerned. The idea of population count every 10 years should be jettisoned and replaced by population count every two decades. The money saved should be used for development of infrastructure of the country. Imagine what N600 billion can do in the development of Nigeria. Odimegwu and his NPC should be asked to go on holidays and come back 20 years after the last census and give us the chance to use the money saved to develop the country. Census is about people and about development. Arbitrary figures are of no importance whatsoever to the development of Nigeria and if we need to take the next census, we should do it scientifically by calling in experts from the UN to do area mapping of Nigeria and to point out the centres of concentration of people through settlement pattern and then project the overall population of our country. This can be done through area photography without the arduous, primitive enumeration and money guzzling system Nigeria revels in.

    We know that elections are around the corner and people are looking for money for election, but we can’t be fooled all the time. The figure of N600 billion for counting Nigerians, many of whom are poor, despairing and despondent such that they would take the money rather than being counted, if given the option is outrageous. There are so many outlandish things going on at the centre in Abuja; recently, the Nigerian Space Authority or something of that sort says it is planning to send Nigerian astronauts into space by 2020. When I read this in the paper, I just laughed that what a country! And I asked myself – how is that important to the ordinary men and even to men who are not ordinary? What direct benefit will sending an astronaut into space bring to Nigeria? Are we going to reinvent the wheel?

    Countries that are sending people into space are already developed and have the basic requirement of decent living for their people. Why would a country whose people still defecate in the bushes or in open space and whose people have no potable water to drink or electricity to light their homes and power their businesses, decent educational and health facilities, efficient transportation system be planning to engage in the expensive venture of space exploration when the Russians and the Americans, the two leading nations in this area are deemphasising state participation while encouraging the private sector to take over these expensive ventures?

    We make fools of ourselves by pretending to be a big power when in fact we are not. We should cut our coat according to our cloth and face the reality of underdevelopment and try to overcome it. This is the challenge we face, the challenge of husbanding our resources and embarking on rapid development, transformation and industrialising our country while we still have the resources accruing from hydro-carbon exploitation. Our mono-cultural economy cannot be sustained forever and in fact cannot be sustained for too long, we have only about 30 years to transform this economy or die. Future generations of Nigeria will not forgive us if we do not embark on the process of transformation right now. Unfortunately, there is too much politicking in the land, too much talk about election in 2015 when in fact nobody knows who would be around tomorrow. We need to do the first thing first, let those who are in government right now discharge their responsibilities to the electorate, fulfil the promises on which they were elected and let the future take care of itself. Nigerians are a long-suffering people and I admire them for that and there is even wisdom in being long-suffering because revolutions do not always pan out. It is better to be long-suffering and to hope for evolutionary changes rather than wish or engineer sudden changes. But sometimes herd instincts and mob mentality can push a people to the edge of a precipice when they feel that the situation is hopeless. We are getting to this point in Nigeria where the more we spend on power generation, the less power we get. For the past 14 years, power generation in Nigeria has not increased past 4000 megawatts and yet, billions of dollars have been spent on this sector without any appreciable change in our power generation situation. Electricity generation is not rocket science, other third world countries and indeed other African countries like our neighbour Ghana have managed to stabilise their power sector to the extent that generators are not as everywhere in Ghana as they are in Nigeria. Would it not be wonderful if the present regime can tell us categorically when every home in Nigeria will have power 24 hours every day? This is something that is taken for granted in most countries of the world even in countries where the frigid weather should militate against this. If we have a government that can guarantee regular supply of water and electricity, then we would know that we are gradually coming out of the stone-age in which we have been consigned by previous administrations. The needs of Nigerians are not many and not outrageous or outlandish. What we require are basic needs for decent human living and we hope and pray that one day, a government would come that would be able to deliver on this simple needs rather than giving us outrageous budgetary figures on space exploration and demographic enumeration.

  • Power without responsibility

    The on-going macabre dance in Taraba State is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our constitution and its operators. It is no more a secret that Governor Danbaba Suntai was aided by two hefty men to disembark the plane that ferried him from the US after 10 months of intensive medical treatment following serious injuries he suffered when he crashed his personal jet near Yola in October last year. It is also public knowledge that he was not strong enough to acknowledge cheers or speak to his enthusiastic supporters and well-wishers that were on hand at the airport to welcome him. Even if the scenario had been different, one will still be tempted to ask what informed Suntai’s desperate bid to take over the reins of government even before he had time to take inventory of what transpired in his absence. But since the governor has not appeared in public or address his state House of Assembly close to two weeks after his arrival, one can hazard a guess – the lure and nostalgic craving for a governor’s pervasive power without responsibility.

    This perhaps explains why the race for the governor’s seat, from nomination to election is often a fierce battle. It is a war viciously fought by desperate men. It is, as ex-President Obasanjo appropriately described it a ‘do or die battle’. It is not a race for the faint-hearted.  Besides brute force which has left us with unresolved cases of assassinated governorship aspirants, it sometimes requires a resort to perfidy and high level of intrigue accompanied with non conventional rules. For instance during ex-President Obasanjo’s failed attempt at railroading the South-west into the ‘mainstream’, an era marked by massive rigging of governorship elections, his point-man in Ibadan, Alhaji Adedibu, the man designated as ‘garrison commander’ by PDP, reportedly took a close look at a governorship aspirant and coldly asked, “Can you without hesitation remove your dress and like a hooligan engage in a public brawl? Can you swear publicly with the Holy Koran on what you know was evidently untrue”?

    And for those who want to be governors by all means, it is a zero-sum game and the end justifies the means.  In 2007 race to Ekiti governor’s lodge, Fayemi outwitted about a dozen of his highly cultured soul mates – journalists, human right activists, intellectuals all sharing the same ideological orientation. But the crave for the governorship seat drove some of them to the embrace of PDP. They blatantly rigged elections and turned the land to a battle ground for about four years. A few months to the next election, the battle line is once again drawn between the governor and Opeyemi Bamidele both of APC. An earlier attempt by PDP to pick its candidate ended in a shoot out. Ekiti state by the way is a poor state whose federal allocation is second to the last on the list of 36 states.

    In  Oyo, Uyo, and Awka as in Port Harcourt where Nyesom Wike, the minister of education (state)  has said he was ready to sacrifice his ministerial position  to fight the battle for the Rivers government lodge by ensuring  Amaechi the incumbent governor of the state does not ‘sleep with his two eyes closed’, the story is the same. The lure of the office of governor is such that all manners of men find it irresistible- those in their 60s, 70s, ex military governors and administrators, serving senators , successful professionals and business men we all describe as  ‘men of great accomplishments’.

    For instance, Chukwuma Soludo, a celebrated intellectual, former CBN governor who for five years pursued PDP monetary policies with passion, cross-carpeted to APGA following his failed attempt at entering Awka government house through PDP. Last week his new party disqualified him from its primaries. Most Nigerians, except the aspirants who understand what it means to be a governor in Nigeria, would ask what on earth Soludo is looking for in Awka after conquering Nigeria and the world.

    The same question can be asked of Dora Akunyili, who as minister of information was the most visible of Yar’Adua ministers. She pursued PDP ‘branding policy’ fraud with passion. The lure of governor’s office however drove her from PDP to APGA. The race for the Awka government house can get no more comical than with the presence of Andy Uba, a former governor for two weeks and a serving senator. He is presently locked horns with Tony Nwoye, a man said to be his protégé. Similarly, the uninitiated is bound to wonder why Senator Chris Ngige would not be discouraged by the ignominy he suffered as a governor when  he was kidnapped in a broad daylight, locked up like a common criminal and asked to write an undertaking renouncing his office as governor. Rather than get discouraged, he is now set for a battle against all comers, including his erstwhile godfather and tormentor, Chris Uba.

    At the last count, besides ministers and captains of industry jostling for government houses in the 36 states of the federation, there are about 40 senators and members of the Lower house set for the battle. They include senators Ifeanyi Okowa, Enyinnaya Abaribe, Hope Uzodinma, Chris Anyanwu, Ike Ekweremadu, Ayogu Eze, Annie Okonkwo, Ayo Arise, Gbenga Aluko, Kabiru Gaya, Olufemi Lanlehin. Others are Representatives, Abdulrahaman Kawu Sumaila,  Emeka Ihedioha, Uche Ekwunife and  Opeyemi Bamidele among many others.

    The desperate bid to be a governor is perhaps because governors have immeasurable powers. They are the lords of the manor in their states. As leaders of their parties, they alone determine who is nominated to contest election as councillors and chairmen, if and when they decide to have local council elections. In most cases they run the councils as local administrations through their appointees. Members of state

    assemblies also need their endorsement before they can contest election. Most state assemblies are therefore extensions of the governor’s office. Attempt to assert their independence will most often lead to Ogun experience under ex-Governor Gbenga Daniel who locked up his state house of assembly and chased the lawmakers out of town.

    We also know governors can through their power of patronage create millionaires overnight. They don’t account for their monthly security votes. In the Niger Delta and North-east, we have seen how governors deployed security funds to sponsor terror gangs that metamorphosed into Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram insurgency. In Oyo State, Adedibu, the garrison commander and leader of the thugs demanded and got 20% of the security vote which he said was needed to mobilize his gangs. That was after getting Abuja’s support to illegally remove a governor that turned down his request.

    The power of the governor is so pervasive. Yet it is often power without responsibility. They are accountable to none but themselves. Perhaps with the exception of Nuhu Ribadu who recently challenged the 19 northern governors to justify the over N16 trillion they collected from the federation account in the last 14 years, we have ignored the governors and LGA that spend over 30 per cent of the budget. We have failed to subject to scrutiny the activities of governors who dish out patronage and gifts to shut up the mouth of the local opinion leaders, including the Obas, the Obis and the emirs.

  • Just me…being self-righteous (4)

    As you read, a shameful thing is happening; men in their teens are meeting to determine the fate of the Nigerian State. Apology to teens, for many a teen have been proven to possess the intellect and soul of a man in his 40s. It’s amusing to see the so-called best amongst us: career youth leaders, activists, journalists, actors, musicians, artisans, professional associations and so on, court the devils we swore to divorce.

    Today, such characters parade themselves as representatives and spokespersons for the Nigerian youth. They are meeting with representatives of the ruling party and its rivals. They meet to chart a game plan; an almighty formula by which the ruling class may enslave us, for the umpteenth time.

    That has to pale in the face of logic; it does. Things are supposed to be different now. But they aren’t. As the 2015 general elections draws nearer, familiar trolls are joining hands with the witless amongst us; their intent is to use us against us in their usual plot to rob us silly. The end result of course, can be better imagined.

    Money changes everything. The need of it makes us human. Loving it could be practical but an obsession with it drives us to the brink, it shows us up, upside-down and inside-out – as men of vulpine souls and intellect, eternally forsworn to despise honour for the love of wealth.

    Many have argued that we can never sell out by playing muscle to the ruling class.

    “We will only be enjoying our share of our collective wealth that they steal from us,” they claim, as we get ready to be courted and plied with easy money and other inducement, by the same politicians who customarily treat us with disdain until the elections approach.

    Whatever justification we choose to give to it, a bribe is a bribe. And more often than not, it changes a relation. Once accepted, it vitiates a large chunk of the essence of the recipient, making him inferior, like a man who has paid to lie with a skunk, the same way the impotent pays to be sodomized by a horse thinking it would cure him of his impotence and aid him to sire by a woman, a blessed child.

    The folly of our ways shall soon dawn on us, as it did, few days after we installed the current dispensation. The meek and humble leadership we thought we had installed evolved to become one of the worst tyrannies Nigeria would ever produce. It’s worse than any other, given Mr. President’s manipulability by the murder of crows he has surrounds himself with.

    A brilliant tyrant could be trusted to a certain degree of depth and capacity to lead but a manipulable tyrant is infinitely more dangerous, as he cannot be trusted beyond his blandness, intellectual handicaps and devious plots of his coven of cronies, advisers and kitchen cabinet.

    In the corrupted currents of the world such men have foisted upon us, we can only devise more alluring ways to play dumb and project our generation as easy marks for the ruling class to exploit. The current liaisons between the ruling class and the so-called representatives of the Nigerian youth portends an ominous development.

    It presages the continued enslavement of the Nigerian youth and our incapacitation by obscene inducements and gifts of grandeur; the perpetuation of a system in which the youth are psychologically confined and broken by financial inducements, dubious segregation and manipulative politics; where the sentimental fops amongst us are programmed by rumors, innuendo and outright falsehood to shun the path to progress and tow the fast lane to destruction.

    Many have argued that the major problem afflicting the country is the dearth of inspired leadership mooted and drawn from the nation’s youth divide. A converse view is that of the presence of eminently capable persons out there, many have failed to altruistically and responsibly apply themselves. Like every other Nigerian, they are busy looking out for themselves. Likewise, prospective heroes we could rely on have learnt the wisdom in keeping silent. They tactfully scoff at our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo, knowing that, as usual, we would settle for an opportunistic contract between our exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour and youth leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin aptly identifies as “the original sweetheart agreement.”

    I recommend as usual, uncompromising passion and will to act, guided by probity and a conscious quest to achieve the personal and collective good within the ambit of fairness, equity and unflinching morality. Without such humane attributes, every measure we endeavour to apply will fail woefully. Policies and practicable solutions are mere words on paper; they can only be activated by our conscious efforts to attain actualize them.

    Mr. President, the National Assembly, the judiciary, our 36 State governors and political parties are indisputably worthless and impotent without the support of the Nigerian youth. These societal creatures depend on our goodwill to survive. It’s about time we stopped playing disposable muscles and junkyard dogs to them.

    Money and other inducements they dangle before us shall be exhausted sooner than we can ever imagine. If we are indeed serious about installing visionary leadership capable of steering us from the threshold of ruin to the portal of hope and social renaissance, we have to start now.

    The Nigerian youth needs a platform. We need a more concrete forum than Facebook and Twitter. We need to create a rallying point by which we could sit to determine a bloodless path to a promising future. Yes, the current leadership won’t relinquish power easily; we will wait. But while waiting, let us identify and vote into power that particular breed whose idealism and pragmatism capably understands our painful silences and heartfelt dreams in order to speak and actualize them.

    Let us begin to ignore those who would desert us no sooner than they regain their hold on power. I speak of men and women like the current ruling class; today they recoil into their secluded compounds in Banana Island, Lagos, their palatial estates in Abuja, and exclusive neighbourhoods in Europe. They seek to isolate themselves from the tragedies that mar our world. So doing they indulge in unrestrained hedonism and extravagant consumption of their ill-acquired wealth. We, the suffering masses are however, repressed with greater ferocity every time we protest.

    Our resources are being depleted; soon they will be exhausted. And then our hollowed-out edifice shall collapse. Impoverished and severely robbed of optimism, we, the hopeless masses will rise against the ruling class in a premeditated and very savage strike – of which we shall suffer the worst consequence.

    Like in all such uprisings, Nigeria will plunge into a canyon of blood and maniacal murders, in the name of the “revolution.” The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress, “…extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations ossify and collapse.

    Today, we tow a similar path.