The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Bayero: 50 years on the throne of Kano

    Bayero: 50 years on the throne of Kano

    The ancient city of Kano is one of the seven Hausa Bakwai states allegedly founded by the eponymous ancestor of the Hausa people Bayajidda who married the Queen of Daura after killing the snake Sarki that was apparently terrorising the local people. Myth of course is not the subject of history but myth is important sometimes for rallying the people.

    Kano and Daura are sister emirates in the heartland of Northern Nigeria. It is generally presumed that Kano emerged as an embryonic settlement in the 8th century but by the 14th century, Kano was so highly developed that it did not only become a centre of commerce and industry but a centre of Islamic civilisation with its own Ajami script and with a civilisation that radiated into several parts of the central and western Sudan. Indeed Muhammad Al-Maghili, the 15th century Islamic teacher lived in Kano for a while. This Islamic tradition was overtime undermined by syncretist tendencies of the Habe rulers. This was one of the reasons for the Fulani jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio. The first Fulani emir of Kano was Muhammad Suleiman who displaced the last Habe ruler Muhammad Al Walid in 1805. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Fulani emirs have been on the throne of Kano emirate, the most important economic centre of Hausa land. Kano developed as a result of its trade links with the Maghreb and North Africa in general. During the 19th century, Kano’s contact with the Western Sudan was further accentuated by the spread of the Tijanniyah brotherhood or Tariqa associated with the rise of Alhaji Umar, the 19th century founder of the Segu- Toucouleur Empire. The Tijanniyah brotherhood brought Kano and what is now Senegal into close proximity. Even though the Fulani emirs of Kano follow the Qadriyyah Tariqa, nevertheless, the liberal and vibrant economic environment of Kano tolerated other ideas within the broad spectrum of Islamic civilisation.

    When the colourful Muhammad Ado Sanusi, the Emir of Kano from 1954 -1963 came into conflict with modern political leadership of Northern Nigeria particularly Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria and was accused of high-handedness and consequently removed and banished to the dusty little settlement of Dutse, Kano emirate was shaken to its very foundation but the crisis was overcome when Muhammad Inuwa was appointed emir of Kano. He did not last long on the throne when he passed on in 1963 and a highly educated and highly regarded successor in the person of Ado Bayero, a son of Abdullahi Bayero, a previous emir was appointed emir. Mallam Ado Bayero was born on June 15, 1930. He had worked with the British Bank for West Africa and had also been involved in 1949 with the Kano native authority which under Sir Fredrick Lugard had developed the Beit-el-mal (Native Treasury) to such an extent that the revenue of Kano was almost half of the revenue of the entire Northern Nigeria and the emir then earned slightly more than the Governor-General of Nigeria. To serve in the Kano native authority in the management cadre was not a little thing then. Later on, Ado Bayero went abroad for higher education in local government administration. On his return, he became the chief clerk of Kano town council. In 1954, he contested election into the Northern House of Assembly on the platform of the NPC (Northern People’s Congress) – Jamiyar Mutanen Arewa and of course won the election in grand style. He later resigned his membership of the House of Assembly to head the Kano native administration police. He held this post from 1957 to 1962 from where he was appointed Ambassador plenipotentiary and extraordinary of Nigeria to Senegal and it was from this post that he was called back home 50 years ago to be appointed Emir of Kano.

    His appointment was a wonderful choice especially at a time when Nigeria had just acceded to independence and the future looked very bright. He has been on the throne of Kano during which time Kano had witnessed great strides in its development, fortunes and misfortunes and the various vicissitudes of life that is the experience of any vibrant city. The industrial growth of Kano during his reign has been phenomenal so also has been the educational development with several high schools and two universities and industrial layout as well as commercial enterprises; Kano remains the second most important economic centre of the country after Lagos. Because of this, the city has attracted a lot of people mostly from other parts of Nigeria and a large population of Asians particularly Lebanese and Syrians. Kano has also witnessed the radicalisation of politics as manifested through various left-winged political parties starting from Alhaji Aminu Kano’s NEPU – Northern Element Progressive Union which later metamorphosed into the PRP – People’s Republican Party. The Emir has also lived through the regimes of several governors in Kano particularly colourful ones such as Abubakar Rimi and Bakin Zuwo to mention but a few. Through all these, this wise Emir has been able to maintain peace and concord amongst his own people even when he was challenged by radical politicians and by the Maitatsine riot of 1979/1980 when the emirate was plunged into violence. If not for the wisdom with which the emir handled the situation, the story would have been different. His recent escape from an assassination plot by the Boko Haram shows that this group has no respect for anybody. The people of Kano rallied round their wise leader who in public statement displayed the greatest attribute of a great ruler when he said he fears nothing and whatever would be, would be and that his life is in the hands of Allah.

    His service to his people derives from the ideas of noblesse oblige in which leadership goes with service to the people, in which leadership carries responsibilities which must be fearlessly discharged. Bayero has been a steady hand in the politics of Kano and one dares say in the politics of Nigeria. His friendship with the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade, the spiritual head of the Yoruba people is symbolic and it is his own way of helping himself and Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuade, the Onirinsa of Ife, to cement the historic unity of the Yoruba and the Hausa which preceded the advent of British colonialism and a unity which is so desirable today if Nigeria is to survive.

    Alhaji Ado Bayero has also for years been chancellor of the premier university, the University of Ibadan. He has brought to the office the dignity and honour of a first class ruler and his wise counsel has been of great significance to the several administrations that have passed under his chancellorship. I had the privilege in 1981 or thereabouts, to attend an international conference on education with him in the United States and the dignity and glory he brought to this country remains indelible in my mind. Long live the Emir of Kano, Sai Sarkin Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero

  • Boko Haram: Buhari’s odious comparison

    Boko Haram: Buhari’s odious comparison

    For close to three years of Boko Haram insurgency, it has been a daily harvest of deaths. In churches, mosques, markets, motor parks, police stations, prisons and even inside fortified military barracks, it is the same terrible tales of mindless killings. This has continued unabated even with the President’s belated declaration of a state emergency in the troubled areas some three weeks back. Last weekend in Zabarmari ward of Maiduguri metropolis, the Joint Task Force (JTF) on Boko Haram claimed 50 members of the dreaded group were killed during a clash. A week earlier, we were told about 40 were killed in a similar encounter. The flow of refugees within and outside the country has continued unabated. The battle rages on even with deployment of fighter jets and attack helicopters. We have no evidence that the insurgency has been weakened, neither have they renounced their demand for the Islamisation of the country. What is no more in dispute after three weeks of hostility is that we are engaged in a civil war.

    And what this called for is that all hands must be on the deck. Of course the opposition must keep the ruling party on its toes. It must do everything short of undermining our sovereignty to discredit the ruling party so that they can take over power. In America, the self-proclaiming guardian of democracy, the Republican Party that piled up 16 trillion debts, took their country to two senseless wars are doing everything to discredit the Obama administration. But at the outset of the senseless external war, Americans along with various institutions including the media and even religious groups presented a common front.

    That is what our nation needs today. But tragically, the opposition, in the last four weeks, has been behaving as if the battle to dislodge PDP is not about Nigeria and Nigerians. I think the president who after two years of praying for miracle has now decided to confront those who declared war against the nation deserves a break. He had been accused even by leading members of his party of incompetence for failing to deal decisively with Boko Haram. Even the northern leaders who sent their children to the best schools in the world with state funds while institutionalizing a culture of almajiri at home blamed President Jonathan for the social dislocation of their society.

    The president was asked to embrace dialogue, but dialogue failed to move the religious fundamentalists. He was pressurized to grant amnesty along the lines of what obtained in Niger Delta, but this only led to the intensification of war against innocent Nigerians. Those who institutionalized poverty by misapplication of their state resources while only 27% of children of school age Borno are in school, suggested poverty alleviation and building of mobile schools for the itinerant almajiris. But Boko Haram became more emboldened as they chased pupils and teachers out before setting the schools ablaze.

    While all this was going on, there was a culture of criminal silence among northern leaders. Those who managed to speak spoke from both sides of the mouth, blaming President Jonathan for their four decades of betrayal of the people of the north. Jonathan’s sin was upstaging the northern parasites in their game of political subterfuge.

    And finally when Buhari, often a victim of selective perception spoke, he made an odious comparison. Like a leader who only listens to himself, he declared “You see in the case of the Niger Delta militants, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sent an airplane to bring them, he sat down with them and discussed with them, they were cajoled, and they were given money and granted amnesty.” They were trained in some skills and were given employment, but the ones in the north are being killed and their houses demolished. They are different issues, what brought this? It is injustice”.

    I sympathize with General Buhari, the author of ‘Nigerians have no other country but Nigeria’. He has always been passionate about Nigeria. But his greatest undoing has been the fact that he was ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-tempered to manage society. It is most unlikely that Buhari’s last three attempts at the presidency, his lamentation about travails of a well -endowed nation repeatedly raped by its incompetent and unambitious leaders, his public shedding of tears over the nation’s woes could have just been informed by a desire to protect the interest of his highly visible and powerful Fulani minority ethnic group or the current crop of Jihadists who operate only on the basis of their narrow interpretation and understanding of the Holy Koran.

    My suspicion is that, besides being ill-equipped, Buhari like most new converts of new religion, merely mouths democracy without comprehending what it entails. For instance, for him, multi-partysm and free election equal democracy. He is not bothered about the subject matter of democracy such as fundamental human rights, equality, liberty and justice and freedom from government which favours rulers and their friends just as it was during his short reign in 1995 and just as it has been under successive PDP presidents in the last 14 years. It will be ironic for a man who is so passionate about his country, if in the words of Orisetjiofor, CAN president could ‘oppose a state of emergency when some parts of Borno and Yobe states had been occupied and the Nigerian flag replaced with theirs, burnt churches, schools, government institutions, killed innocent Christians, attacked traditional rulers and others not sympathetic to their cause’.

    Nigeria is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious society. Any political party that intends to rule Nigeria cannot afford to ignore any interest group. Democracy after all is a game of number and to ensure a sense of belonging, our founding fathers designed for us a federal arrangement that guarantees a place for individual and groups. Buhari may have his own personal failings, but I think he will remain a great asset to his new party as role model for multitude of miracle seekers all over the country who like him are not democrats but passionate believers in the potentials of our nation.

    Buhari, imprisoned with his narrow Fulani ethnic culture and religious world, left unaided cannot see anything outside this prism. But he has always excelled in nearly all assignments delegated to him. He was installed as head of state by professional coupists, Babangida and Abacha with little knowledge of their agenda. As minister for petroleum for four years, we exported refined fuel along with crude oil. As Head of State for eight months, we did not import grains. In fact storage facility for excess grains became our problem. Similarly, as chairman of Abacha’s Petroleum Trust Fund, Buhari performed creditably well. As a Nigerian military commander, he drove insurgents that attacked Nigeria from northern Cameroon during Shagari era far into Cameroon territory.

    Even by his own admission, his joining partisan politics was not of his own initiative but that of others. According to him “his close associates and those who knew him very well convinced him to join partisan politics”. And as man not versed in the acts of compromise, the hallmark of democratic process, but passionate about our country and its potentials, he moved from APP to ANPP, CPC and soon to APC. In his new party, Buhari must allow for a generational change as those who manage the world today are in their 30s and 40s while he provides leadership and moral support just as Asiwaju Tinubu now does for his highly competent and well equipped ACN governors.

  • Niggers with attitude (3)

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

    Life as a freeman is simply unthinkable for a Nigerian nigger. It’s a dream come true and yet an overwhelming reality which bodes too devastatingly for his kind, our kind. We who are ‘free’ do not know how to be free. To our former colonial masters, letting go of the yokes by which they enslaved us renders them open to a culture shock; rapists who were used to predatory living and being waited upon suddenly have to be responsible for their own lives. It’s like a mad experiment pitting medieval apes in the cockpit of 21st century modernism; the effect is awful and redolent of duplicity and base humanity.

    But the fault is never with the colonialist; Nigeria has no business blaming Britain for the pitiful husk our fatherland is fast becoming. Neither should we blame America, Asia or the rest of Europe for whatever misfortune becomes our lot.

    It’s getting too old now. It’s undeniably tiresome too; that entitlement to victimhood and loser mentality we have learnt to project. Decades after we attained freedom or at least, a semblance of it from Britain, we remain disposable gourds for alien trolls to sip from. What happened to the popular saw about being exploitable to the extent of the customary fool’s willingness to be exploited?

    The British Prime Minister (PM) recently threatened to withdraw so-called aids (which are in actuality, chains) from Nigeria if the country refuses to repeal its anti-gay law that stipulates 14 years imprisonment for anyone found engaging in homosexual liaisons. Canada and United States lent their voices to the disgraceful clamour and desperate bid to legitimize psycho-sexual perversions on the Nigerian people. Even more worrisome is Britain’s recent decision to impose a £3, 000 (about N750, 000) visa bond requirement on Nigerians seeking to travel to Britain. They will forfeit the money if they overstay in Britain after their visa has expired.

    I do not blame Britain for its decision since the country has every right to determine what laws or criteria facilitates or hampers its immigration system and foreign relations. I blame Nigeria for putting herself in a position that empowers every depraved lecher to defile her from behind and ‘missionary’ style in the full glare of the whole wide world.

    Shall we take this too smilingly? Already, the Nigerian leadership has responded in its characteristic fashion threatening to ‘retaliate’ in kind if Britain fails to rescind its contemptuous decision. But even Britain knows that Nigeria’s response is likable to the habitual drunk’s vengeful fart to every callous romp he witnesses of his wife and the bachelor next door.

    If Nigeria were to be serious, she would respond by demanding that every British tourist, businessman or expatriate seeking to travel to Nigeria post a bond of £300, 000 before being allowed into Nigeria as a precondition that they would customarily seek not to evade tax, abuse their domestic staff and employees and further, must accept to be paid their salaries only in Naira and into Nigerian banks. But this would be deemed preposterous by Britain and hordes of Nigerians desperately trying to be more British than the Brit.

    The Nigerian government should be able to pull this off knowing we do not need Britain but Britain desperately needs us – just as the whole of Europe needs Africa to survive. Should every continent shut its doors to the other and look inwardly to chart its path to the prosperous future of its dreams, the African continent would stand in greater advantage, with the right attitude, conscientious leadership and citizenship but this is a discuss well suited for another day and another forum.

    Today, let’s deal with Nigeria’s constant humiliation in the hands of Britain and the rest of the world. We are to blame for every humiliation we are forced to endure at home and abroad. And this is because we have failed to evolve. Many have argued that it is only fair that Nigeria experiences such humiliation given the quality of local and global citizenship of the average Nigerian. Unemployment, pervasive poverty and terrorism at home force many Nigerians to scramble for safe havens abroad but how really safe are the safe heavens abroad? What if the so-called ‘lands of greener pasture’ decide to repatriate every Nigerian immigrant in future?

    A few eggheads have recommended practicable solutions to Nigeria’s recurrent malaise of bad leadership but more often than not, their wonderful and highfaluting solutions and theories of progressive change, reverberate as blandishments to Caucasian wisdom – which further establishes the fact that many a self-styled intellectual revolutionary and paper tiger is substantially a colonial apologist still smitten by the vaunted wisdom and altruism of the so-called ‘first world.’

    The crises in modern Europe and America: financial meltdown, unemployment, mediocre youths, sexual perversions, state-sponsored terrorism, the elevation of might above morals and simple human decencies and racism among other things, reveals their ordinariness and punctures farfetched arguments of their invincibility, impeccable humanity and wisdom. Hence there is no point elevating the Caucasians above every vile or ill that makes the Nigerian spite and wish the worst on his fatherland.

    The task before us is clear enough. Let us seek to be good. Without the beaming brightness of the simple decencies and morality that makes a rustic village tower higher than Elysium, Nigeria will continue to set adrift. Good people produce good leaders. Bad people produce and ennoble bad leadership. The attitude of the Nigerian mind towards citizenship, democracy and other political measures of self-determination should be divested of the prevalent conceptions of government.

    Some of our greatest problems in this country, besides corruption, are racism and greed. We need not be handicapped by these. The future of Nigeria lies in our hands. Sovereign National Conference or not, no solution will work under the leadership and citizenship of unrepentant racists and self-aggrandizing characters like you and me.

    It is time to heal. It is time for the Nigerian youth to take his rightful place in the scheme of things. In order to heal, the Nigerian youth need to create and unite under a socio-political platform immune to and jealously guarded against the madness of materialism, racism and intractable wile characteristic of the current ruling class.

    We need to identify the demons that drive the ruling class and dispossess our minds of every vanity that makes us habitable to similar fiends. The tragedy of our generation subsists in our seemingly uncontainable prospects and our desperation to be lorded over and contained, at a price. If we are indeed more endowed in intellect and humanity than the current ruling class, let us stop being disposable pawns in its politics of bitterness and plunder.

    The Nigerian youth, irrespective of personal politics and tribe, should learn to live and strive, united in common effort, in pursuit of a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in matters of politics and individuality.

    The choice is ours to make; we either choose to remain a bunch of fools and clueless agitators forever, or we could choose to leave the current leadership to the madness it perpetuates while we chart fresh paths to the future of our dreams.

    • To be continued…

  • Planned 3,000 pounds British visa indemnity

    It is the sovereign right of every country to control immigration into its territory. The British are not an exception. I personally have sympathy for the British because of the exploitation of the social welfare state in the UK by unscrupulous people from all over the world. Enoch Powell, the Conservative Minister of Health, from 1960 to 1963 and Shadow Defence Minister, 1965-1968 issued the statement referred to as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech sometimes in 1968, when he foresaw what unlimited immigration could do to Great Britain in terms of racial conflict.

    Powell was a former Professor of Classics and a one-time war hero with a bright political future in front of him, but he lost all these because of his intemperate language against immigration, although not necessarily against immigrants. Powell was branded a racist by his opponents and Edward Heath, the then leader of the Conservative Party had to get rid of him as Shadow Minister of Defence and this brought to an end, a glittering political career of an effective conservative minister.

    When the young English soldier was killed in broad daylight by two people of Nigerian ancestry, some people may have suggested that the prophecy of Powell is coming true. There has also been race riot in places like Bradford and Wolverhampton and the violence that sometimes happens in areas inhabited by visible minorities in the greater London area is sometimes caused by racial resentment. This is unfortunately seen as the inevitable result of non-white immigration into England.

    At the height of British power, its empire spread all over the world and among a multitude of different races. At the end of the British Empire, some of these people have followed the British home. Of course the British themselves have left their physical imprints on virtually all the continents of the world, from Australia, to New Zealand, to Canada, to the United States, to South Africa, to the Falkland islands and even to places where the British did not directly rule such as Brazil, Argentina, and several other Latin American countries to which the British have contributed immigrants. The British are therefore not a people who should be running away from their history and one of the positive contributions of the British people towards civilization is their tolerance of other peoples. Of course this has not always been so, because as an empire builder, the British have always imposed themselves on others by brutal force, but that was in the past. And the future of Britain lies in its multi-racial approach to life. As the most senior member of the Multi-racial Commonwealth, the British cannot walk away from their legacy. And as a trading nation, they cannot afford to damage their relations with other countries because of a discriminatory immigration policy.

    We have not seen the details of the new law, but a law that would target certain countries such as Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, and Pakistan, which may make sense because perhaps these are the countries from where illegal immigrants flock into the UK, but it is likely to be misunderstood by the nationals of these countries that the policy is racially motivated. This policy to me is an advertisement of the failure of British Immigration policy. Is there no other way that the policy can be made to work without asking people to deposit three thousand pounds before being granted a tourist visa that expires after six months? How would the money be returned to the owner? Would this money be paid into the coffers of the various British High Commissions and Embassies all over the world, and then collected from them whenever the visitor returns to his own country of origin? Will interest be paid on the three thousand pounds deposited for six months? And what would happen to somebody who just wants to spend a week or less in the UK? What would also happen to people who have been visiting the UK for years without overstaying their welcome and whose track records are known? There are so many questions begging for answers. As an Anglophile, I would not want anything that would damage our relations with Great Britain to be done. Yes, these are difficult times economically for the whole world and particularly for Europe, but these difficult times would pass. We should be very careful in beginning a process which may lead to ill-feeling and reciprocity by other countries affected; because after all, reciprocity is the kernel of diplomatic relations.

    Some of us who are old still remember with fondness and nostalgia those days when our passports said we were Nigerian citizens as well as commonwealth citizens. I remember my student days in England and in Canada without having to get a visa. That is a long time ago. The world is definitely more complicated than before and things are changing rapidly, not necessarily for the better, but also not necessarily for the worse. We should try and manage our relations in order not to do incalculable damage to existing friendly relations among nations. I remember trying to get a visa to Germany some years ago and the humiliation I went through before being granted a one entry visa to Germany for a duration of two weeks, not even six months or a year; and this is a country where I was an ambassador for five years. Since the visa was a Shengen visa, I took the Euro train from London to Paris return and then try to go to Germany by air from London, and after having been checked in and was about to board the flight, my passport was checked and I was told that I had used my one entry visa to Germany to another Shengen country, France and that my visa was no longer valid for entry into Germany. This was after my luggage had been checked into the plane and I had gone through immigration. I now had to be returned to London, and my luggage removed from the plane. This is a story that I hate to tell and on my return to Nigeria, I told my German friends in Abuja and they were very apologetic about what was done to me in Lagos. Since that time, I have never tried to travel to Germany and I have no intention of ever going there, even though I had beautiful memories of my stay there. First as a research student and later as Ambassador Extraordinary and plenipotentiary and I still remember Germany’s role when the Abacha government detained me because the German Embassy protested about my detention. This should make me remain a friend to Germany forever. I believe that the love between me and that country is not lost. I remember mentioning my treatment in the hands of the German embassy to my brother and friend, Professor Jubril Aminu, former Ambassador to the United States and then Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, who jokingly said, “Jide, we should stay in our own country and stop going to other people’s countries”; this to me was a good advice which I think most of us should keep. But for some of us who have children abroad, what do we do?

    It is a pity that in a globalised world, we are having to face this kind of problems of discrimination essentially based on how one looks and the pigmentation of one’s skin. This does not augur well for global peace which we spend a lot of time and energy in building. As somebody who for a long time has been involved in the foreign policy formation of my country, I would hate to advice on policies based on race in our relations with the outside world. Let us hope things don’t deteriorate to that level. The world is too fractured already with religious conflict and incipient clash of civilisations. It would not be wise to add racial divide into this complex situation.

  • Let’s watch the amber lights

    Let’s watch the amber lights

    That was a show we should all be glad that many missed. Some of the few who saw it – those who can still find a way to power their television sets – may not have thought of its import. Others may just have shaken their heads and hissed in a typical show of peaceful resentment that is uniquely Nigerian.

    I speak of the award handed Dr Goodluck Jonathan at the Villa the other day. A seemingly forced smile playing on his lips, his hands stretched out in some slow, reluctant motion to receive a plaque from his loquacious Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, the President showed no excitement about the matter at hand. Wasn’t the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) prize worth it?

    According to Adesina, the award was for Nigeria’s reduction of hunger under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He told the President: “You’re feeding Nigeria and the international community recognises your efforts and leadership in feeding Nigeria. The FAO of the United Nations (UN) has just given a special recognition to Nigeria for the achievement of reducing the number of people suffering from chronic hunger and for making notable progress in guaranteeing food security for our citizens.”

    He went on: “Your Excellency, according to FAO, the number of Nigerians suffering from hunger reduced from 19.31million in 1990 and 1992 to 13.38 in 2010 to 2012.”

    Now, shouldn’t such hyperbolic obfuscations have their limits even in a country where deception is a big feature on the menu at every meal? How many homes did FAO officials visit in compiling these amazing figures? Isn’t this a clash of figures and reality? Or mere humbuggery?

    But, Adesina wasn’t done. All smiles, he said: “The prevalent of undernourishment in our country declined from 19.3 per cent in 1990/1991 to 8.5 per cent by 2010/2012. This is below the MDG target of 9.7 per cent, which was set for 2015. Therefore, Nigeria has been recognised for achieving the MDG1 for hunger two years ahead of schedule. We are proud of the achievement, Mr President, because of your passion and leadership in pushing for food security in the country.”

    Are we talking about Nigerians’culinary propensity in such superlatives? Many are struggling to fill up their stomachs and now the FAO is talking about nourishment. Bread prices have gone up several times. Forget about the superficial cassava loaf road show. Many kids have refused to stop begging for food in the North, with some governments finding excuses for this obscenity in the almajeri system. How many Nigerians eat well, the kind of meals nutritionists call balanced diet? How many eat three times daily? Beans is threatening to quit the menu list in some homes – no thanks to the Boko Haram madness that has sent farmers fleeing their trade in the Northeast.

    There is so much hunger – and anger – in the land. Such duplicitous figures, no matter how credible the organisation churning them out, will not help. They will only fuel the resentment that is pervasive in the country where factories are closing down, where many jobs have been lost and electricity to power machines and run basic appliances of comfort is not available, where some states, such as Ekiti and Oyo, have started feeding their indigent citizens.

    If the world has chosen to deceive us, must we deceive ourselves? Even our professional sycophants, servile flatterers and palace jesters are yet to see an opportunity in the award. No congratulatory advertorials on national television and in newspapers. No billboards in major cities proclaiming the rare feat. No delegations visiting the Villa. No medals for the phantom farmers who may have made this possible. This must be a rather strange award indeed.

    The poor are getting more desperate even as the rich and powerful get more ravenous in their despicable assault on the common till. The pension fraud is as alarming as the brigandage in banking before the reforms. But, does anything still shock Nigerians? What has become of the Maina matter? The Senate issued a warrant for his arrest but the police claimed that they could not find the man who had an army of police guards around him. Many pensioners – part of those whose chronic hunger has been reduced, presumably – are dying of frustration after queuing up endlessly for their due.

    A few weeks ago in Port Harcourt, road traffic officials arrested a motorist and insisted on towing his vehicle, his only source of livelihood, to their office where he would pay a fine. The poor motorist begged the officials to spare him. They refused. As they got set to tow the car away, the motorist fell under it and started shouting that he would rather be crushed than see his car towed away. Stalemate. The officials, thankfully, realised that they would not win the battle; they let go. Such is the desperation of many Nigerians, who have lost hope in the system.

    I do not have the figures but stories of people committing suicide because they have lost the battle against poverty are common in the newspapers. When hunger lashes the stomach, depression sets in and, if help fails to come, suicide seems an attractive alternative.

    The Arab Spring story is still fresh in our memory. Tarek al-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi was an unknown Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire when a policewoman seized his wares on December 17, 2010. His self-immolation sparked wide protests that eventually forced then President Zine El Abdine Ben Ali to abdicate his office, which he had held for 23 years. He fled. The protests spread like wild fire in the harmattan, hitting other Arab countries.

    I remember Prof Wole Soyinka warning that no matter how much benevolent a dictatorship is, it is no alternative to the people’s right to choose and freedom of expression. The Nobel laureate was delivering the African Development Bank’s Eminent Speaker’s Lecture in Tunis. That was in October 2010. The riots broke out in January 2011. How prescient.

    The other day in Lagos, a friend of mine watched as a council official grabbed a motorcyclist and snatched him off his bike. He accused the commercial motorcyclist of plying an unauthorised route. He insisted on taking the okada away, but the motorcyclist was begging frantically for mercy. The mean council official called for reinforcement. Two others stormed the scene. They overpowered the motorcyclist and took away his bike. Frustrated, the poor man sprang up and flung himself on the ground, crying, kicking and screaming. His bike – most likely his only source of income – was gone. Gone for good.

    Who would have thought that soccer would ever be a source of acrimony in Brazil? The carnival, the samba and the scantily kitted belles swinging their waists. For ages, soccer created a veneer of Eldorado for Brazilians. Everyday was like Christmas. Now, there is a popular revolt against the god of soccer – to the consternation of the world. Crowds have gathered for about two weeks, railing against the system, their protest sparked by a bus fare hike. Coincidentally, the Confederations Cup – a dress rehearsal for the 2014 World Cup – is on. Now, the people are saying enough of soccer stadia; give us jobs, food and better education.

    In Turkey, the government’s seemingly innocuous plan to redesign a park in the beautiful city of Istanbul has caused a nationwide protest. The protesters complained of lack of consultations. The government replied with an iron fist, unleashing the full might of the police on them. Now, the action has engulfed most of the major cities. The government has apologised, but the fire rages on as the protesters demand more freedom of speech, right to assembly and resignation of the Erdogan government.

    It is as clear as a sunny day that the park matter was only a springboard to launch a massive attack on a system that many consider not good enough. The anger had been there for long, even in a country where the economy is doing fine. The global economic downturn did not hurt Turkey; trade is growing and the prospects of joining the European Union (EU) looked great – until the protests.

    Tunisia, Turkey and Brazil are a few exhibitions of the limits of human patience and ability to endure pains, physical and psychological pains inflicted by the very people who swore to make life easy for the ordinary man by implementing policies that promote justice and better living conditions for all.

    The government is overwhelmed by domestic problems –some of them self-inflicted. Boko Haram continues to ravage some parts of the North, despite the state of emergency. Armed robbers and their cousins, the kidnappers, are on the rampage – the ill-equipped and poorly motivated police are fighting with their bare hands even as the Federal Government would brood no idea of a state police – and diseases are killing many who would have survived in better places.

    Amid the rot, the government is embroiled in running battles over 2015 . Like a novice, it mixes politics with governance. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) is like a demonic mother hen killing its own chicks. Rivers. Adamawa. Sokoto. And others.

    Caution. Caution. The amber lights are on. Will the government notice this?

  • Travails of a war hero

    His name conjures fear. When many hear the name Benjamin Adekunle, they look behind their shoulders to see if he is coming. As the legend goes, Brig – Gen Benjamin Maja Adekunle aka Black Scorpion was a brave and ruthless soldier. Many heard the tales of his exploits during the 1967-70 civil war. Gen Adekunle’s fame grew during the war. As small as some of us were then, we heard how he handled the enemy and treated his soldiers who fell out of line.

    There was a myth surrounding Gen Adekunle. It was said that he could disappear and reappear to wreak havoc on enemy territory. Of course, many of the stories were embellished, but the people chose to believe them because they suited those times. People believed anything thrown at them so far the Nigerian side was winning the war. The Adekunle myth grew as he was said to be a soldier that the enemy could not touch because he wielded certain powers.

    The Adekunle myth followed him home after the war. Many wonder till today if he actually did all that people said he did during the war. The man is tough no doubt and he showed early in life that he is going to be a non-conformist. For a boy to run away from home at the age of nine to fend for himself is enough evidence that he will not allow people to trample upon him anyhow when he becomes an adult. This rebellious streak in him stalked him all the way. At military training schools in the United Kingdom (UK) and India; in the Nigerian Army; as aide-de- camp (ADC) to the former Eastern Region Premier, the late Sir Akanu Ibiam and at the war front, Gen Adekunle played by his own rules.

    But he could not be ignored by his bosses because, according to those who should know, he was a damn good soldier. The Black Scorpion fought the war as if his life depended on it. Those in his command remember him as a commander’s commander. Hear one of them, Brig – Gen Alabi Isama, who was Adekunle’s chief of staff during the war : ‘’What did these people (Adekunle and others) do wrong to the society? They went to the war and came back alive. But what did they get out of it? Nothing! Today, Adekunle is forgotten by the country. That is the hero of the civil war. He won all the battles…’’ Yes, as Gen Isama said, the Black Scorpion ‘’won all the battles but not the war’’.

    By that statement, Gen Isama was referring to the parlous condition of Gen. Adekunle, who is lying critically ill at home. Should a person in such a condition be kept at home? The answer is no, but the Black Scorpion is being treated at home because an air ambulance is not readily available to fly him to Ghana. When I read his story in last Saturday’s edition of this paper, I shook my head in belief that a thing like this is happening to someone of Adekunle’s calibre. No matter what some may consider as his eccentricities then, Gen Adekunle does not deserve to be treated as a nobody in this country.

    Our country owes a lot to people like him for fighting to ‘’keep Nigeria one’’. If they did not make that sacrifice, we may not be where we are today. The war in which he played a leading role ended 43 years ago, but it seems some people are still holding that against him. What could he have done to warrant being treated like this at the old, ripe age of 77. He was 77 yesterday. Happy birthday sir. But the best birthday gift we can give him as a country is to assist his family in getting him to Ghana fast for further treatment. All the family needs to do that is an air ambulance. The family says it has written to the army to assist in that regard without success. The army worldwide does not abandon its own. It rallies round its operatives and does everything to protect them.

    Where they are ill or wounded in battle, the army ensures that they get the best of treatment. And here, we are talking of Adekunle. Does he have to beg before he gets his right? This is the tragedy of our country. We treat our heroes with contempt and give looters of the treasury red carpet treatment, thereby sending a wrong signal to those coming behind. The Adekunle family seems to be at it’s wit’s end in its bid to get the authorities to help in flying its patriarch out of the country. Hear Abiodun, son of Gen. Adekunle : ‘’He is very weak and not in control of his memory. It is more of memory problem. He is not able to recognise people around him or anything. But, at some other times, he recognises people. So, it is an on and off thing. I have tried very hard to get the Nigerian Army to come to his aid without luck. Here is a man who spent his youth fighting a war to keep the country one. In other organised societies, he would be treated as a hero. But unfortunately, here in Nigeria, he has been forgotten by all’’.

    Let those in authority listen, whatever is done for the Black Scorpion today cannot be too much. As they say, he has paid his dues. Many, if not all in Service today, are his juniors. Will they watch and allow their superior to die all because of his family’s inability to get an air ambulance to fly him to Ghana? It is Gen Adekunle that we are talking about today, we don’t know what may happen tomorrow to those still in office. God forbid, if they become seriously ill after leaving office and help is not forthcoming as in the case of Gen Adekunle, how will they feel about their country? In Gen Adekunle’s present position, he cannot be happy that a country he fought to preserve seems to have abandoned him at his hour of utmost need.

    To those in authority, I com

    mend, Gen Isama’s re

    marks in this paper last Saturday. He said: ‘’Everybody is aware that he (Adekunle) is battling to stay alive. But, should we wait until he dies and then roll out the drums, shouting that he was a hero and start marching round the town? Every January 15, the whole country gathers to remember our fallen heroes. What about our living heroes?…As the Commander of the Third Marine Commando, he captured Calabar…he sent me to capture the whole place. We captured the whole of what is today known as Cross River State…So, Adekunle was our leader. But, unfortunately for him, he was not a thief like many of them. If he were a thief like many, his condition would not have been like this today. Can’t you see the others? Don’t you see where they live? Adekunle’s house was renovated by Ogbomoso people…Let this country rise and help this man to live a little longer in comfort because he has denied himself such comfort while fighting in the war. There was no commander of the Nigerian Army that is better than Adekunle. Why should he be the worse off today?’’

    Indeed, Adekunle or any other retired officer for that matter should not beg for bread. They should not be made to see their service to the country as a curse after retirement otherwise we may start breeding officers, who will be more interested in making money rather than serving the country.

    There is still room to make amends in Adekunle’s case; it is not too late to do that. The country awaits the Chief of Army Staff’s prompt response to this matter. Whatever he does, he should remember, he will be doing for a senior colleague and only God repays such a kind gesture.

  • June 12: History lesson for our youths

    Last week, the social media was suffused with youth messages about their resolve to fight for their rights. Their new resolution they claim stemmed from the discovery that many PDP men have occupied the political space for far too long. Bamanga Tukur, current PDP chairman, they said was old Gongola State governor back in 1983. Bello Halliru a commissioner in old Sokoto State in 1980 is today, 33 years after, Minister of Defence; General David Mark, who was governor of Niger State in1984 has continued to monopolise the senate presidency. David Jonah Jang who was governor of Benue in 1985 is today governor of Plateau and trying to add the chairmanship of NGF he lost to Amaechi in an election; Murtala Nyako governor of Niger State in 1976, 36 years ago, is now governor of Adamawa State etc. They are keeping their battle strategy a secret.

    The reawakening of our youths is a welcome development. After all, Nigeria youths were in the forefront of the battle against colonialism. But before our youths, who are now university graduates at 19s and 20s embarked on an unwinnable war against politicians who recently publicly declared they would rather die than lose power, I think they first need to understand how the past, when some soldiers of fortune claimed they were sacrificing their present for our future, has come to shape the present ‘cash and carry democracy’ and a recycled leadership.

    Let us start with Ibrahim Babangida, the master of political subterfuge. He rode on the back of civil society groups and the press that detested Muhammadu Buhari’s tyranny following his palace coup against him in 1985. He introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which destroyed our economy and legitimized corruption. In an effort to teach Nigeria that had engaged in party politics since the 1920s how to form political parties, he self-conceitedly decreed two government political parties, National Republican Convention (NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), wrote their constitutions and manifestoes, appointed Tom Ikimi and Tony Anenih to run them as parastatals. His institute for democracy became the breeding ground for many of today’s PDP leaders. After eight years of ‘transition without end’, and billions down the drain, he annulled the landslide victory of Moshood Abiola, his friend.

    Arthur Nzeribe. He is the leader of government sponsored shadowy Association for Better Nigeria(ABN), declared illegal and banned from canvassing for ‘four more years’ for Babangida by the court. It secured a midnight judgment from Justice Bassey Ikpeme’s Abuja court to derail the Babangida’s eight year transition despite the existence of Decree 53 which shielded the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from court interference.

    Professor Humphrey Nwosu was the author of much derided “Option A4” which turned out to be Babangida’s nemesis as the method produced the most credible election acclaimed by local and international observers but faulted only by Babangida. He remained faithful to the transition by exploiting Decree 53 which shielded his NEC from prosecution until Babangida committed political suicide writing his name on the wrong side of history.

    Abiola made his fortunes through his military friends. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti described him as ‘international thief thief’. He set up a newspaper to fight Awolowo, the most prominent Yoruba politician who had mooted the idea of probing the military and their civilian fronts. He launched into politics, made a failed attempt at securing the NPN presidential ticket but was rudely told by Umaru Dikko that Nigerian presidency was not for sale. He stormed out of NPN and deployed his immense wealth to the services of the people all over the country without discrimination. He took on the West insisting it must make reparations for about 400 years of slavery. He was lured back into politics by Babangida who later betrayed him. He died in prison trying to protect the mandate freely given to him by Nigerians.

    Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa of the NRC who during the presidential debate said he wanted to be president because “our nation is divided by issues of suspicion, distrust and the fact that most Nigerians have lost faith in the country’s leadership whether military or civilian”, was initially chief campaigner for ‘four more years’ for Babangida. He was an oil consultant under the military making thousands of pounds daily before he was lured into politics.

    Tony Anenih was the chairman of a victorious SDP who bargained away the victory of his party. He has a larger than life image of ‘Mr Fixer’, a euphemism for election rigging. He is currently PDP BOT chairman and chairman of Nigerian Ports Authority.

    Tom Ikimi was one of Babangida’s ‘new breed’ creations and the government-appointed chairman of the defeated NRC. He succumbed to pressure from his military masters in their conspiracy against our nation.

    Nduka Irabor was the press secretary to Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida appointed vice-president. It was Irabor who read an unsigned statement, hurriedly scribbled on a piece of paper which confined the June 12 election to history.

    Nduka Obaigbena, a failed senatorial candidate under NRC from Delta was on CNN barely 12 hours after the June 12 election calling for cancellation of the results because Abiola went into the polling booth wearing a dress with the stallion picture of SDP logo. His argument was the one adopted by government.

    Okey Uzoho was the NRC publicity secretary who on June 16, 1993, four days after the election signed the NRC document that formally called for the cancellation of the election on the grounds that there were ‘intimidation of voters, falsification of results in most states and monetary inducement by the rival SDP. And quoting Obaigbena, the statement concluded that ‘Abiola breached electoral law by wearing a dress bearing SDP logo’

    Walter Ofonagoro as Tofa’s campaign director of organization in a 14-point statement insisted that the election was not free and fair. And citing the Abuja court injunction, and quoting Obaigbena’s MKO’S alleged contravention of decree 13 of 1993 for parading himself before voters in Lagos in the colours and emblem of his party… he demanded “the disqualification of Chief Abiola, and Tofa declared duly elected or in the alternative, the June 12 election cancelled and a fresh poll conducted.”

    Clement Apamgbo, the Attorney-General of the Federation, was privy to Section 19 of the Presidential Election (Basic Constitution and Transitional Provision) Decree 13, of the 1993 which says “no interim or interlocutory order by any court or tribunal shall affect the date or time of the election”. But Nwosu, the NEC chairman confirmed that “The commission was served with a writ of summons through the honourable Attorney-General of the federation to show cause why the commission should not be charged for contempt of the said Abuja High Court for conducting the said election in defiance of the court order.”

    Duro Onabule, Babangida’s chief press secretary, while all this was going on, refuted foreign media reports that the federal government was interfering with the results of the presidential election. According to his statement: “NEC has been saddled with the responsibility of conducting the election; and it is left to it to bring to government’s attention any problem that tended to adversely affect its patterns. Government was yet to get any complaint from NEC.”

    General Adulsalami Abubakar, another major player in the June 12 debacle emerged following the death of Abacha to rescue the totally discredited military from final humiliation. Abiola died under his custody. In 1998, the embattled military wanted someone that would protect them out of government. They reached out for jailed Obasanjo who had during his own transition in 1979 opposed Obafemi Awolowo for threatening to deal with individual military officers that looted state treasuries.

    General Obasanjo was the main beneficiary of June 12 tragedy. He had said at the onset of the crisis that Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. He helped in installing an illegal Interim National Government headed by Ernest Sonekan, Abiola’s Egba kinsman. When the military zeroed on him as their candidate in 1998, Babangida, Danjuma, David Mark and other military ex- office-holders and their contractors including Kalu Uzor Kalu sponsored his candidacy. Obasanjo served two terms without acknowledging the contribution of Abiola to the enthronement of democracy. In an attempt to obliterate June 12 1993, Obasanjo and PDP fraudulently imposed May 29, the day the military was humiliated out of power as ‘Democracy Day’.

    This abridged history of June 12 and its enemies is important for our youths because none of the above men except Humphrey Nwosu has bothered to write his memoirs.

  • Niggers with attitude (2)

    It is not what you call him, but what he answers to that matter most. This minute, another innocent child is born into the world of the Nigerian nigger. He will grow up pitifully, as just another poor black ant. His parents shall name him Clinton, Dave, Cregg, Oliver, Richard, Lovett, Colet, Da Silva, Humphrey, Jackson, to mention a few. His real names: Akanbi, Chiedu, Chimaroke, Isichei and so on shall become his “native names” or “middle names;” names he shall grow to loathe and be ashamed of. At a tender age, he shall be taught to despise anything and everything Nigerian, by parents who will persistently bemoan the erosion of the Nigerian culture.

    That impressionable child will be enrolled in schools that teach the superiority of western civilization. He shall be taught to think of Africans, Nigerians in particular, as an inferior race. He shall be psychologically defrauded and taught to accept his place as member of a hostage race and generation. As he grows up, he too shall learn to evolve a masochistic appetite for alien norms, unearned riches, undeserved acclaim and everlasting humiliation. Time and over again, he shall learn to assimilate and project “imported condescension” as the next best palliative to his innate malaise.

    Like his forbears, he will get too impatient for his daily dosage of indoctrination and imported disdain and thus quit gawking at celebrated perversion on cable TV, social media and foreign news publications to be part of it. He shall doggedly sweat his way through standoffish, ill-bred and disdainful foreign customs and immigration officials in order to enjoy his share of dishonor and racial profiling abroad. Abroad, he shall labour to be part of what kills him. Like hordes of Nigerians slaving away abroad, he shall strive and try the patience of reluctant Caucasian hosts with his recalcitrant corruption and doggedness for eternal humiliation.

    He shall crowd the sidewalks of New York, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London, sweeping the streets, doing the dishes and washing the anuses of elderly Caucasians with the shameless carriage of “a nigger who would rather die than return home.”

    And if he is fortunate to come from a privileged background at home, abroad he shall dwell, enabled and hampered by the lowliness of his mental skies. He shall desperately seek to impress caucasian course mates and neighbours with extravagant parties and insane acquisitions. He shall traipse the largely well kept streets – by immigrants like him – of London and New York in his desperate quests to purchase monumental forgetfulness at the mall. The over-celebrated malls of America and Europe shall continually whet his yen and titillate his airs. They shall become heaven to the ‘hellish’ markets of Ajegunle and Oyingbo ‘Ibo-made’ products.

    He is everything that is wrong with the black race. So pronounced is his inferiority complex that the tragedies of his civilization perpetually wail in its littlest details; take for instance, the contemporary Nigerian’s obsession to host extravagant wedding ceremonies and birthday parties abroad to the benefit of the host state and loss of valuable revenue abroad.

    It is even more amazing to see him obsess about foreign football leagues while the local football league suffers a slow, gruesome death. Like tadpole in Iju-Ishaga road crater, he believes if he could wade in the puddle for so long, he would grow scales and scissor-tail like an alligator in the English wild.

    An inelegant ‘mumu,’ he keeps pretending to channel joy and fulfillment from the attainments of another land while he bemoans the “poor leadership” that’s “killing Nigeria.” In response, he seeks escape by renouncing his roots. He conveniently forgets that, no matter how long the tabby cat pretends to roar like a lion, it will forever remain a cat…a whiny, pitiful parlour pet.

    The Nigerian youth has learnt to justify his moral claim to the successes of western civilization. He has learnt to intone that the so-called “first world” was built from the blood and sweat of his slave ancestors thus his right to a stake in the “first world.” Thus today, the average Nigerian continually celebrates his cultural graduation from the servitude of slavery to being verbally nettled condescendingly as a “third world nigger” and subsequently distinguished by association with his perceived level of evolution.

    The Nigerian nigger no doubt personifies the imagery of the black nigger in Chika Onyeani’s “Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success: A Spider Web Doctrine.” He suitably illustrates Onyeani’s depiction of the black race as a consumer race and not a productive race. “We are a conquered race and it is utterly foolish for us to believe that we are independent. The Black Race depends on other communities for its culture, its language, its feeding, and its clothing.” “Despite enormous natural resources,” he says, “Blacks are economic slaves because they lack the ‘killer-instinct’ and ‘devil-may-care’ attitude of the caucasian, as well as the ‘spider web economic mentality’ of the asian.” Onyeani calls for economic liberation through hard work, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and fiscal discipline; he advocates building of better black neighborhoods instead of moving to hostile white neighborhoods; he appeals for unity, because “When spider webs unite, they can be a lion” (Ethiopian proverb). Onyeani condemns self-destructive behaviors such as ethnic warfare, dictatorship, black-on-black crime, and slavery in Africa.

    But fitting as it is to the Nigerian malaise, Onyeani’s literature is just another version of Johann F. Blumenbach’s human racial classification in which the “caucasian” is at the top of the hierarchy and the black is at the bottom. Capitalist Nigger is also reminiscent of the French philosopher Lucien Levy-Bruhl’s “primitive” or “prelogical mind,” which he originally attributed to the Africans; and Hegel’s exclusion of sub-Saharan Africa from the world history among others.

    Like Onyeani I believe in the liberating character of the truth. However, I do not subscribe to his legacy of disbelief about Africa which permeates European imagination. Instead of confronting old stereotypes, Onyeani recites them with relish, thereby refreshing erroneous notions in the reader’s mind.

    His description of the African as non-productive, lazy, slavish, Neanderthal, dishonest, undisciplined and genetically unable to take care of himself is contemptible even as it speaks to the core of the Nigerian nigger.

    I do not agree with Onyeani for his “Capitalist Nigger” epitomizes the worst of blasé witticism that serve like double-edged sword, decapitating plausible realities and counter-arguments in its quest for applause. Yet in his subtle narcissism subsists truths, relative truths if you like.

    It rediscovers and plumbs the depths of inferiority plaguing the Nigerian nigger. It is what makes the Nigerian Presidency nurture insults from perverse caucasian governments threatening to withdraw financial aids if Nigeria fails to legitimize same-sex copulation and marriage. It is what makes an average Nigerian lose his head in arrant madness over foreign soccer leagues. It is what makes the Nigerian lust to be less than to the pleasure of the so-called “first world.”

    It is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops when someone threatens your life, takes away your freedom, and doesn’t kill you.

    It is what causes the Nigerian to bark like a stray dog, pitifully seeking the collar end of the leash of the “first world.”

  • Fire on, Fayemi – 2

    Fire on, Fayemi – 2

    The governor has an eight-point agenda which all dovetails into the overall development of the state. I do not intend to go into the details. All I can say is that agricultural development is a major plank of his agenda. Ekiti State by and large is an agricultural state, but it must not remain like this forever. We must begin to add value to our agricultural produce. We must also begin to think about how we can use our granite that is all over the place for industrial purposes such as tiling and flooring of houses and building generally. Our premier secondary school in Ekiti, Christ School has remained standing for such a long time because of the use of stones in building the old hostels and the quadrangle in the school. We can learn a little bit from the past and use some of these stones for major construction.

    The work of government would not be done in one administration or even in one generation, but it is a continuous process. We would need the expertise and drive of Fayemi not only in this administration, but in the one to come, unless he is drafted to a higher office at the centre which is quite possible and that is if he makes himself available. But there is no doubt that Ekiti needs him more than any other level of government. This is why a spontaneous and unprogrammed show of love and affection for him after the Supreme Court’s decision was a matter of great joy for all observers and I was not surprised at all. This is because Ekiti people are straight forward people and are not used to hiding their feelings. A story was told in 1999 during the election for the Presidency that some farmers in Ekiti were going to their farms during the election and when they were asked to go back home and vote, their leader retorted that he thought election for the Presidency had died with Obafemi Awolowo and that he did not think anybody else was fit to be president. When Ekiti people love a leader, they love him or her totally, unquestioningly, unabashedly and without any equivocation. So I believe it is with Kayode Fayemi.

    This is why I find it difficult to understand that a member of Fayemi’s party, the ACN from the central senatorial zone that has produced two governors in the state in the persons of Adeniyi Adebayo and Ayo Fayose should be taking advertisements in newspapers claiming he was going to challenge Fayemi for the nomination of the ACN. I dare say this would be an exercise in futility. Even in good old England – the home of democracy, parties are allowed to nominate candidates for elections by acclamation. It is not undemocratic for parties to acclaim an incumbent as a candidate for election. Challenging Fayemi on the grounds of internal democracy is not going to be a strong argument. Whatever the case may be, if challenged, Fayemi will be able to win convincingly. Democracy is not about elections alone, important as this may be, but it is the performance and fulfilling the manifesto on which one was elected that counts. This would be the strong point for the forthcoming elections next year. It should be a shoo-in for Governor Fayemi even though nothing can be taken for granted. But when the time comes, those who feel this governor has done very well will come out to attest to his performance.

    I remember the election of 1956 in the old Western region which brings happy memories to me. This was after five years of Awolowo’s first administration; my own brother, Chief Oduola Osuntokun was a member of that cabinet as from 1954 onwards when he was appointed minister of works and housing. The Action Group government’s stellar performance was so evident that the 1956 election was almost a referendum. The party went into the election with achievements in education, works and housing, agriculture, education and finance etc. It was during that regime that free universal primary education was launched in 1955 in Western Nigeria. The construction of Bodija housing estate was ongoing and farm settlements to absorb products of primary schools who could not find their way into colleges began. Liberty stadium in Ibadan and the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (WNBS/WNTV) were under construction. So when the election was called inspite of the vigorous opposition of the NCNC, the Action group came back in a landslide.

    Yoruba people are the most sophisticated electorate in Nigeria and it is difficult to fool them. Fayemi will go into the elections next year with a record that is palpable and therefore unbeatable. He has a precedence to follow and he will follow that precedence with the same result. It would be our task as part of the intelligentsia and illuminati to remind our people where we were some three years ago and where we are now. Service they say deserves its rewards and so shall it be in Ekiti state next year.

    Of course, it is not possible to say that all that needs to be achieved has been achieved. Fayemi is not perfect, indeed no one is perfect. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was called “good master” turned this adulation down because He said no one is perfect except God. The task of governance is a continuous one and as J.F. Kennedy said this cannot be completed in one administration or even in our lifetime. One generation builds on the foundation of another and one leader stands on the shoulders of previous ones. What is important in the life of a politician and a leader is that he/she must leave a legacy on which to build. But the task of the Fayemi administration is yet to be completed and the consolidation of his achievements will not be done until the end of the next administration when it will be possible for him to leave legacies that would endure eternally. It is in our interest not to deny him and ourselves this opportunity.

    I say again service deserves its reward. The only way for our country to achieve greatness is if we reward our leaders with gratitude and appreciation when called upon to pass judgment at the appropriate time. A prophet is without honour in his own country, said our Lord Jesus Christ, but that was then. In our country where non-performers and incompetent leaders are imposed on us, we must now begin to honour those of our leaders who discharge their responsibilities to us with courage, honour, integrity and the fear of God. Fayemi is not only internationally recognised as an intelligent and a capable leader. To be so described by the London Economist magazine is the highest accolade which a leader in any country developed or developing can get. Not only did the Economist eulogise Fayemi as a sign of progress in Africa, it called on others to emulate him. I join his admirers to tell him that he has made us proud and even if we don’t have oil and gas, we have a leader with the abundance of grey matter that we can exploit for our state’s development. We cannot allow this opportunity to slip from our hands. This is why I say Fayemi Fire On.

  • Will democracy in Nigeria hold?

    Will democracy in Nigeria hold?

    General elections are not due in Nigeria until 2015, two years from now, and they are eagerly awaited with mixed expectations, even some concerns that they will not be free and fair. If they are not free and fair, the results will gravely impair Nigeria’s fledgling democracy, re-enacted after many fits and falls only since 1999. That was the year the Nigerian military withdrew from power after the longest period of military rule in Nigeria.

    Two weeks ago, Nigeria officially marked “Democracy Day” on May 29, the day in 1999 that President Obasanjo was sworn in by the departing military junta. But the South Western states where the ACN is in power marked the event on June 12, instead, the date in 1993 in which Chief MKO Abiola won the general elections, later annulled by the military government. The dispute over the right date is not really important. What is important is the peaceful transition from military to civilian democratic rule in Nigeria. It was a protracted and often violent struggle for power between the military and civil society during which many pro-democracy leaders suffered terribly in the hands of the military, with many being forced into exile in very difficult circumstances. After all this, the question now is whether our new democracy will survive after all the sacrifices made to remove the military from power. What then are the prospects?

    Despite current strains and stress in the political environment, I believe the future prospects for the survival of democracy in Nigeria are quite good, definitely better than ever before. First, it is unlikely that the military will seek to return to power again. But this is not simply because military rule in Nigeria stands discredited. The fact is that the conditions that made military rule possible have ceased to exist. The most important of these was the lack of consensus among the political class in support of civilian democratic rule. Some politicians, in their bid for power at different levels, actually courted and supported military rule in Nigeria. They were a powerful minority that clandestinely encouraged military intervention in Nigerian politics in the expectation that they will profit from it. The situation today is vastly different. The politicians have built up a consensus in support of civilian democratic rule in Nigeria that the military will have considerable difficulty in breaking.

    Secondly, there is increasing dislike of military rule in Africa and the rest of the world. Most African countries are now under democratic rule, fully backed by the African Union, and the international community. In fact, this development is a global phenomemon as more and more states are moving away from authoritarian rule to majority rule. In fact, today, only Cuba and China, for historical reasons, are still under one party Communist rule. But even in those two countries, considerable political and economic liberalisation has taken place. Despite a lot of strains the successor states of the former Soviet Union are now practicing variants of democracy. So, democracy is an idea whose time may be said to have come.

    The third reason why I think democracy will survive in Nigeria is that despite ethnic divisions, the people of Nigeria are broadly in support of a democratic way of life with all the benefits it can confer on the people. The Nigerian public is now more politically aware and is extremely unlikely to support any form of undemocratic rule. The political consequences of the “Arab Spring”, still sweeping the Arab world and the Middle East, are a sufficient deterrent to any form of maximum rule all over the world, including Nigeria. Due to growing economic prosperity, the middle class is beginning to emerge in Nigeria again after decades of reverses it suffered under military rule. Middle class values will make any form of absolute rule difficult in Nigeria. The Press which has always been in the forefront of the struggle against military rule will not easily give up its newly won freedom. The Press is far freer today than ever before. It will be difficult for any government in Nigeria to seek a confrontation with the Nigerian media today. Most of it is privately owned and politically independent to some extent.

    However, it has to be admitted that our democracy is facing severe strains at the moment from several sources. First, there is the pervading sense of insecurity in the nation from Boko Haram and other violent extremist religious and ethnic groups. Nigeria is still largely a weak state where, despite its best efforts, the government is unable to secure the lives and properties of its people. These violent extremist groups do have the potential of undermining democracy in Nigeria. As more and more centrifugal forces are unleashed on the nation, this will threaten its democracy and even corporate existence as a nation. The only way to counter this possible scenario is for the governments, at all levels, to create better economic conditions in the country.

    It must be admitted that there is a lot of political alienation in the country today, and that this could easily undermine our march to a full-fledged democratic society. Many graduates cannot find jobs and are increasingly being alienated from the society. Service delivery in the country is generally poor and it is affecting economic activities. At the moment, the poor energy delivery is hurting many businesses. Increasingly, people have to rely on their own resources to provide services that the state is expected to provide. Even the poor now struggle to send their children to private schools, including Universities, and hospitals because of the virtual collapse of state run institutions and services. This trend is not healthy for a commitment to a democratic way of life. Social and economic injustice tends to undermine a commitment to democracy as the rewards and benefits of such commitment are not so evident.

    The Nigerian economy may be growing but so are economic inequalities. These internal contradictions have to be vigorously tackled by the state to create conditions conducive to the flourishing of a democratic way of life in our country. Many of the Western powers are apprehensive about the future of democracy in Nigeria. In fact, many western intelligence agencies fear the country will simply crumble. Some fear the crunch will come in the 2015 general elections. But Nigeria will survive if the elections are free and fair and if the electoral commission shows a determination to run a free and fair election. It should stop its current prevarications over the registration of the APC, the new opposition party that is seeking to challenge the ruling party, the PDP, in the 2015 general elections. The political space must be opened up by INEC to ensure transparency in the elections. As the current disputes in the PDP have shown the political parties lack internal democracy, a basic condition for democratic rule in the country.